The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has instructed the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to take steps to bring back an Indian citizen’s Pakistan-born son, who was deported after the April 2025 Pahalgam attack.

Justice M.A. Chowdhary, hearing the petition filed by Sajjad Ahmed, 42, issued directions to the MHA “to retrieve the petitioner’s son, namely Aasim Sajjad, aka Fardin Sajjad, pursuant to ‘Leave India Notice’ dated April 25”.

The court held that the son, who was around 18 years old when deported to Pakistan in 2025, should be allowed “to pursue his application for extension of long-term visa”. The court also directed the MHA to consider and grant citizenship against the application filed by him under Section 5 (1) (d) of Citizenship Act, 1955.

“[Sajjad Ahmed] being an Indian citizen, this court, is of the considered opinion that having regard to the sacrosanct human values and rights, the court must step in to pass certain directions,” Justice Chowdhary observed, while passing the directions to the MHA.

The court asked the MHA to carry out the exercise “expeditiously, preferably within a period of eight weeks”. 

Mr. Ahmed, a resident of Rajouri’s Budhal, had gone to Pakistan on a valid passport in 2005 to meet his relatives. During his stay, he married Shabnum Kouser, a resident of Pakistan’s Gujranwala. The couple’s baby was born there in 2006. He returned to India in 2007 and applied for visa extension for his family members on yearly basis on the grounds of marriage. In 2013, Mr. Ahmed’s wife died of an illness. The minor son’s visa was extended till 2015.

According to the family’s plea, the father moved several applications through proper channels before the competent authority for seeking declaration of his son as a citizen of India “but neither the son had been declared a citizen nor visa extended in his favour”.

“As a bolt from the sky, personnel of the J&K Police raided the house of the petitioner and took away his son without any information or copy of the deportation order,” according to the father’s plea. Later, the son was “taken forcibly in a police van and deported to Pakistan via Wagah border”.

Scores of Pakistan-born citizens, married to citizens of J&K, were deported from the Union Territory after the Pahalgam terror attack, which left 26 civilians dead.