Srinagar, 29 April

Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday have set the ball rolling for the deportation of 60 Pakistanis, one of them the mother of Shaurya Chakra awardee who was killed in a terror attack, officials said.

They were all collected from various districts and taken in buses to Punjab, where they will be handed over to the Pakistani authorities at the Wagah border, they said.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack last week, the Centre announced a slew of measures, including suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, downgrading diplomatic relations with Islamabad, and ordering all Pakistanis on short-term visas to leave India by 27 April or face action.

The 60 deportees comprise wives and children of ex-militants, who returned to the valley under the 2010 rehabilitation policy for former ultras.

Of them, 36 had been living in Srinagar, nine each in Baramulla and Kupwara, four in Budgam, and two in Shopian district, officials said.

Shameema Akhtar, the mother of Constable Mudasir Ahmad Shaikh, who died in May, 2022 while fighting terrorists, is one of the deportees.

Mudasir was part of the team of undercover operatives of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, which intercepted a group of foreign terrorists.

Shaikh was posthumously awarded the Shaurya Chakra. Shameema, accompanied by her husband, received the award from President Droupadi Murmu in Delhi in May, 2023.

'My sister-in-law is from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which is our territory. Only Pakistanis should have been deported,' an apparently not happy Mohammad Younus, Mudasir's uncle, told reporters.

After Mudasir's death, Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited the family, and so did the Lieutenant Governor, twice, he said.

'My bhabhi was 20 years old when she came here and has been living here for 45 years now. My appeal to (PM Narendra) Modi and Amit Shah is that they should not do it,' Younus said.

Shameema had married Mohammad Maqsood, a retired police officer, before the eruption of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir in 1990.

The main Baramulla town square has been named Shaheed Mudasir Chowk in memory of the policeman.