UP ATS questions Pak citizen Seema, Indian partner Sachin for hours on day 2

The cross-border couple was first interrogated by the UP ATS on Monday at its office in Noida and was allowed to go home about 10.30 pm

Noida: Pakistani citizen Seema Haider, who entered India illegally in May and is staying with her partner here, was picked up Tuesday by the Uttar Pradesh Police’s Anti-Terrorist Squad and questioned for hours, a second day of quizzing by the agency.

A local police official said Haider’s Indian partner Sachin Meena was also taken for questioning.

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The duo was picked up from their residence in Rabupura area of Greater Noida around 8 am and brought to the ATS’s unit office in Noida, where the questioning continued till evening , the official said.

The cross-border couple was first interrogated by the UP ATS on Monday at its office in Noida and was allowed to go home about 10.30 pm.

Haider (30) and Meena (22) were first arrested by the local police in Greater Noida on July 4 but were granted bail by a court on July 7.

Explaining the questioning process of the UP ATS, an agency officer on Monday told PTI that the couple “may or may not be arrested” after the interrogation, depending on the outcome of the inquiry in the sensitive matter that pertains to national security. The local police is separately investigating the case lodged under the Foreigners Act and is yet to file a chargesheet.

Seema had entered India along with her four children in a bus from Nepal in May to live with Sachin. The couple, who claims to have gotten married in Nepal earlier this year, had first got in touch in 2019 over online game PUBG.

On July 4, Seema was arrested by local police for entering India illegally and Sachin was held for sheltering illegal immigrants.

However, they both were granted bail by a local court on July 7 and have been living together along with her four children in a house in the Rabupura area.

During her interactions with media, Seema said she does not wish to go back to Pakistan and wants to live with Sachin. She also claimed to have turned a Hindu. Back home in Pakistan, the family and neighbours of Seema Haider told a PTI correspondent that they do not want her to return, while a gang of dacoits attacked a Hindu temple with rocket launchers in the Southern Sindh province on Sunday.

The assailants attacked the small temple and adjoining homes belonging to Hindus in the Kashmore area of the Sindh province, a police officer there said. There was no loss of life in the attack.

The attack came days after dacoits in the Kashmore and Ghotki riverine areas had threatened violence at Hindu places of worship and community members in retaliation to Seema and Sachin’s PUBG love story.

Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have informed the country’s government that “love” is the “only” factor that led the mother of four to sneak into India to live with a Hindu man whom she befriended through an online game platform, a media report said on Monday.