Originally from Pakistan, Zahida Begum has lived in Indian-administered Kashmir for more than a decade. She married and has raised her family in the territory, but a new, sweeping Indian government directive could end with her deportation. “Just kill us here,” she said, “but don’t separate our families forever.”
In late April, a hardline armed group launched a brutal attack in Pahalgam, a town in the Jammu and Kashmir region. By the time the assault ended, the perpetrators had killed 26 civilians, almost all of them tourists. During the lead-up to the brief but far-reaching war New Delhi and Islamabad soon waged against one another, the Indian government announced it would deport all Pakistani nationals.
The war ended with a ceasefire on May 10, but for Pakistani women who relocated to the territory under the 2010 rehabilitation policy for former militants, the hardships have continued to mount. The Indian government has since deported hundreds of Pakistani women.
For Begum, who came to Kashmir in 2013 but now faces an order to leave, deportation would mean living her life far from her three children. “I have three children,” she explained, alleging that Indian authorities “have told me to leave my youngest daughter here.”
Recounting her circumstances, Begum broke down in tears. “She is little,” she said of her youngest daughter. “How can I leave her here?”
While the government “scapegoats [women] for its own policy failures,” she argued, she has struggled to sleep. “Every time I hear a knock [at the door], I think they’ve come to take me.”
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In 2010, then-Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the rehabilitation policy, arguing that it would offer a path for former militants to renounce violence and return to the territory. Of those who took advantage of the policy, many returned from Pakistan with Pakistani wives, hoping to rebuild their lives in Jammu and Kashmir.
As the recent military exchange heated up between India and Pakistan, Indian authorities blamed Pakistan for the deadly Pahalgam attack, downgraded diplomatic ties, and ordered Pakistani nationals to leave the country. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to hunt down the perpetrators “to the ends of the earth.”
Over the last decade and a half, these women have raised families in the Indian-administered territory. Their children have attended local schools. They have obtained Indian-issued documents, including identification cards, voter IDs, domicile certificates, and ration cards. The way they see it, Kashmir isn’t just the place they reside — it’s their home.
Now, on the tail of the Pahalgam attack and the military flare up, they are now stuck without legal protections and with no political voice, facing the threat of deportation many haven’t lived in for well over a decade and that their children have never seen.
Asmat*, who has lived in the Kashmir border district Baramulla for 15 years, would return to Pakistan without any of her family. “I feel lost,” she said. “After 15 years of raising my children here, the thought of losing them is unimaginable.”
Recently, Asmat contacted her local police station to submit a video record and affidavit stating that she doesn’t want to return to Pakistan. “I have voted here in elections,” she explained. “My name is on the voter list. My children get scholarships for religious minorities in India. I identify as a citizen of this country.”
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The sudden deportation orders have meanwhile raised serious concerns over their legality and human rights issues. “Deporting them without due process violates their rights and sets a dangerous precedent,” explained a New Delhi-based legal expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity..
The lawyer pointed to the fact that the deportation orders overwhelmingly target women and children, who are already among the most vulnerable groups, especially during times of heightened tensions. When Indian authorities order women to leave their husbands and India-born children, the lawyer added, it becomes “an unimaginable humanitarian crisis.”
Deporting them without due process violates their rights and sets a dangerous precedent.
The lawyer argued that if the government truly believes the Pakistani women were there illegally, “why did it let them live peacefully for 14 years?”
In a statement, India’s foreign secretary insisted the crackdown was within its rights, saying New Delhi would be “unrelenting in the pursuit of those who have committed acts of terror, or conspired to make them possible.”
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Misbah had never seen Kashmir before relocating to the territory, but the way her husband spoke of it, she imagined it as “a land of paradise.”
At a local cafe in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, Misbah recounted their journey back to the Indian-administered part of the territory. She had planned to visit Pakistan after a few months, but Indian and Pakistani policy, along with ever-present border tensions, has meant years have gone by without her returning to Pakistan.. “A decade has passed,” she said, but I have not been able to visit any of my family or relatives.”
At the same time, the deportations include some children who were born and raised in Kashmir, speak the local language fluently, and have no clue what Pakistan looks like.
In Baramulla, one 12-year-old girl broke down crying in the principal’s office when she learned that her mother, originally from Pakistan’s Punjab region, had received an order to leave Kashmir. “What is our fault?” the child asked, adding: “Who will take care of us if our mother is deported?
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In Kupwara, one woman, who requested anonymity, said her son was recently denied a school transfer certificate on the grounds that she isn’t an Indian citizen. “I’ve lived here for 13 years,” she added. “I gave birth to my child here. My husband is Kashmiri. But to them, I am just a number to deport.”
Addressing the Indian government, she said bitterly, “What do you want us to do? Go back to a country that never knew us? Leave our children behind? Die?”
In the meantime, women whom Indian authorities haven’t already deported remain in limbo. The policy that brought them to Kashmir is gone, the government that once welcomed them has turned its back, and they would hardly recognize the country they left behind.
Before leaving the cafe in Srinagar, Misbah pulled out her phone to show a photo of an Urdu poetry couplet. “A cage [is] no more a barricade,” it read. “Even if freed, we have nowhere to go.”
*Some women requested pseudonyms for privacy and safety.
