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Produce woman held under Foreigners' Act, State told

Special Correspondent

JAIPUR : Rajasthan High Court has asked the State authorities to produce Najma Parveen, presently lodged in the Central Jail here under the Foreigners' Act, before it on January 17. The court directive came in the wake of a habeas corpus petition filed by the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Rajasthan, on the confinement of Najma.

The bench of Justice Mr.Shivkumar Sharma and Justice Mr.Vineet Kothari, after hearing the petition from Ajaykumar Jain, counsel for the PUCL, asked the Superintendent of the Central Jail to produce all official records pertaining Najma, who was first arrested in Jaipur in the year 2001, along with her husband Shahid and their five children. They were termed illegal Pakistani migrants. The authorities later released Najma and children while Shahid was booked for violation of Officials Secrets Act and was sent to jail. Najma was arrested again in 2002.

The PUCL petition told the court that Najma, a resident of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, along with her husband had gone to Pakistan in 1989 to meet the latter's uncle in Karachi. There Shahid met with an accident and the family could not return to India before the visa period expired. The uncle, who had migrated to Pakistan after the partition, too had problems as the fundamentalists set on fire the press from where he used to bring out a newspaper titled "Tabdeer".

After remaining in hiding for many years in Pakistan, Najma and Shahid managed to return to India along with their children in 2000 with the help of fake documents.

However they were arrested in 2001. Najma, who has been in jail since 2002, has completed her sentence. One of the children of Najma died during her jail term while the remaining children are with their paternal grandfather. The PUCL counsel told the court that despite a court order in the past allowing bail to Najma she was not released from jail.

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