Now Reading: 150 Pakistani Hindu brides arrive in India after visa hurdles cleared
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150 Pakistani Hindu brides arrive in India after visa hurdles cleared
Around 150 Hindu girls from Sindh province in Pakistan have arrived in India to get married, after being stuck due to visa restrictions. Their marriages were already fixed in cities like Nagpur,…
Around 150 Hindu girls from Sindh province in Pakistan have arrived in India to get married, after being stuck due to visa restrictions. Their marriages were already fixed in cities like Nagpur, Raipur, Jodhpur, and Pune, but they could not travel because of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan after Operation Sindoor, which led to the closure of the Wagah-Attari border route.
Community leader Vivek Kukreja told the outlet that these families have decades-old ties across the border. The girls' families approached the Shadani Darbar in Ghotki, Sindh, whose spiritual head Sant Yudhishthirlal Shadani helped compile a list and submit it to the home ministry. The government granted visas on condition that the brides and one family member each travel by air, via Dubai or Sri Lanka.
Many Hindu families in Pakistan face social and religious difficulties as a minority. For them, marriage in India is not just a family bond but also a hope for a safer future, Kukreja said.
Indian Opinion Analysis
This is not a new phenomenon. Sindhi Hindu families on both sides of the border have intermarried for generations, and the Wagah-Attari land route was the preferred corridor until its closure after the 2019 Pulwama attack and the subsequent Balakot airstrikes. What is new is the scale: 150 stranded brides is an unusually large backlog, reflecting how quickly the land border's shutdown froze personal lives. The home ministry's decision to allow air-only travel is a pragmatic fix, but it is costly for families who would otherwise take a bus or train. The real constraint going forward is not goodwill but process: each visa application still requires security clearance, and the number of such cross-border marriages waiting in the wings is unknown. The next data point to watch is whether the ministry formalises a streamlined category for marriage visas for Pakistani minorities, or continues to handle these cases one list at a time.
Source: aajtak.in
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
