External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has met Pakistani boy Mohammad Ramzan, who has been stranded in India and living in a shelter home in Bhopal. The minister said that all efforts will be made to reunite him with his mother.
Swaraj said that they are ready to give visa to her mother, so that she can come to India and meet her son.
She also said that his mother can also stay here. However, for sending Ramzan there, Pakistan needs to issue visa for him, which is possible only when they accept him as their citizen,” the minister said, while talking to media persons in Bhopal.
“We can send his blood sample to Pakistan for DNA test to match with his mother. Else, Pakistan can send his mother’s blood sample and we will get it tested here. We are ready to do everything to unite the mother and the son,” she said.
Sushma Swaraj, who is an MP from Vidisha, met Ramzan at her official residence in Bhopal. She asked Ramzan, whether he wants to meet his mother to which he replied in affirmative. Subsequently, the minister promised, “We will reunite you with your mother”.
The minister said that Indian embassy in Pakistan will issue a visa to his mother.
She tweeted:
He wants to be with his mother. If Pakistan accepts him as their citizen, we have no problem in sending him there.#Ramzan
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 22, 2015
I met #Ramzan in Bhopal today. pic.twitter.com/CulabdSbrC
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 22, 2015
Ramzan’s ordeal started when his father divorced his mother in 2009. His father, thereafter moved to Bangladesh along with Ramzan and remarried a woman in Bangladesh, which only compounded problems for the boy.
He was allegedly tortured by her stepmother. In an attempt to got back to her mother in Pakistan, he crossed Bangladesh to India two years ago.
Ramzan’s childhood photograph, which was sent by child protection unit from Pakistan. hindustantimes
In September this year, his mother got the information about the boy and contacted him from Pakistan over the phone in Bhopal. They are in regular touch since then.
Last week, his mother refused to visit him in Bhopal, giving the reasons that she felt “atmosphere in India was not friendly to Muslims” and that she was not sure about her safety.
Ramzan has called her mother and said that he is also Muslim and have been living safely in India.
“He has been upset ever since,” says Ravi Kanojia, a teacher at the shelter home. “Even after she refused to come down, Ramzan called her again two days ago.
Ramzan loves football and adores Lionel Messi but he ends up playing cricket because that is what others play.
Ramzan’s story is similar to Geeta, who was reportedly just seven or eight years old when she was found sitting alone on the Samjhauta Express by the Pakistan Rangers 15 years ago at the Lahore railway station. Geeta was adopted by Edhi Foundation’s Bilquis Edhi and lived with her in Karachi. She returned to India on October 26.