43 Years, Then Exile: The Heartbreaking Deportation of Kashmir’s Divided Families

India’s Mass Expulsions Target Residents from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Tearing Apart Families

Poonch, Indian-administered Kashmir: In a devastating blow to cross-Line of Control (LoC) families, Indian authorities this week forcibly deported 11 residents from Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PaK) including seven women who had lived for decades in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Among them was 55-year-old Surya Kausar, who was sent back through the Attari-Wagah border despite having no surviving immediate family in PaK, leaving behind her Kashmiri husband and four children in Poonch’s Mendhar area.

A viral video shows the distraught woman collapsing at the border, crying: “I’ve spent 43 years here. My children, my home, my dead mother’s grave—everything I love is in Kashmir. Where do I go now?” Her deportation exemplifies the human cost of India’s new retaliatory policy following the Pahalgam attack, which has seen at least 34 more PaK residents—most women married to local men—marked for expulsion.

A Lifetime Erased

Surya’s life traces Kashmir’s painful divisions:

1982: Born in Muzaffarabad to a mother originally from Poonch (separated during Partition), she was brought to Indian-administered Kashmir by her uncle after becoming orphaned.

1980s-2020s: Built a life in Golad village—married local shopkeeper Abid Hussain Shah, raised four children, and cared for her aging mother until her death in 2018.

April 2025: Police arrived unannounced, ordering her to leave within hours. Relatives say she was assigned to a distant cousin in Kotli she hadn’t seen in 30 years.

“She speaks Pahari and Kashmiri, not even fluent Urdu anymore,” said her eldest son, showing identity cards proving his mother had voter and ration documents since 1990. “They’re sending her to a place that hasn’t been home for two generations.”

The Broken Promise of Reconciliation

The deportations violate the spirit of India’s own 2010 rehabilitation policy for former militants:

• Historical Context: Hundreds of Kashmiris who crossed to PaK in the 1990s were permitted to return with spouses and children under PM Manmohan Singh’s initiative.
• 2025 Reversal: Families legally settled under this policy now face separation. Over 60% of those deported are women from PaK married to Kashmiri men.

A former militant (name withheld), whose PaK-born wife faces deportation, lamented: “In 2012, officials welcomed us back saying ‘start anew.’ Now they call my wife an infiltrator. Our twins don’t understand why their mother is being taken away.”

The Larger Pattern

This crackdown continues India’s systematic severing of Kashmiri kinship ties:

• 2019: Cross-LoC trade and travel suspended after Article 370 revocation.
• 2023: New rules required “foreigner” registration for PaK spouses.
• 2025: Mass expulsions under the guise of “national security.”

“First they divided us with borders, now with deportation orders,” said a women’s collective leader in Poonch. “These women cooked our weddings feasts, mourned our dead. Today, we’re helplessly watching their forced exile.”

— Reporting by Noreen Haider for The Azadi Times

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