The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has sought a fresh update on the steps taken to bring back a Rajouri youth who was deported to Pakistan in April 2025, nearly seven months after it directed the Union Home Ministry to consider his retrieval on humanitarian grounds. Hearing a contempt petition on October 28, Justice Rahul Bharti called upon Senior Additional Advocate General Monika Kohli to apprise the court of the latest inputs available with the District Magistrate, Rajouri, on compliance with the court's judgment of March 25, 2026.
Source: CNN-News18
The contempt petition was filed by Sajjad Ahmed, a resident of Rajnagar village in Rajouri district, whose son Aasim Sajjad, also known as Fardin Sajjad, was deported to Pakistan amid the heightened tensions that followed the Pahalgam terror attack. The court directed that the requisite status be placed before it on the next date of hearing and listed the matter for November 2.
In its March judgment, Justice M. A. Chowdhary had directed the Home Ministry to consider retrieving Aasim Sajjad from Pakistan so that he could pursue his pending applications for extension of his long-term visa and for grant of Indian citizenship under Section 5(1)(d) of the Citizenship Act, 1955. The court had asked the ministry to undertake the exercise expeditiously, preferably within eight weeks, keeping in view the humanitarian aspect of the case.
Source: Indian White Paper
The case dates back to December 2005, when Sajjad Ahmed travelled to Pakistan on a valid passport to visit relatives and married Shabnam Kouser in Gujranwala on December 11, 2005. Their son was born in Pakistan on October 26, 2006, and the mother and child came to India in October 2007 on valid Pakistani documents. After Kouser died in Rajouri in June 2013, Ahmed continued to seek visa extensions for his son and applied for Indian citizenship on his behalf.
Ahmed has alleged that police personnel took his son from their home at around 4 a.m. on April 29, 2025, and deported him to Pakistan through the Wagah border. The government, for its part, has maintained that the youth was a Pakistani national whose visa had expired and that the deportation was carried out in exercise of the sovereign power to regulate the entry, stay and departure of foreign nationals.
In its March judgment, the court noted that Aasim Sajjad had lived with his father in Rajouri and studied in India from 2007 to 2025, passing Class 12, and that after his mother's death he had no immediate family in Pakistan except a maternal aunt. Observing that human values and rights are sacrosanct, the court said it must step in to pass directions. The Rajouri district administration is now expected to inform the court on November 2 of the progress made in implementing the judgment.