The wish of 90-year-old Reena Chhibber of Pune was finally fulfilled after 75 years. The Government of Pakistan has given Reena Verma a three-month visa to Pakistan as a goodwill gesture. Now she will be able to go to her ancestral home in Rawalpindi. Let me tell you, after 75 years of leaving the country, Reena reached here on Saturday from the Wagah-Attari border.
Soon after reaching Pakistan, Reena left for her hometown of Rawalpindi. Here she will also visit her school and childhood friends after going to her ancestral home, Prem Niwas. In a video uploaded on social media, Verma, who hails from Pune, said that her family was living on Devi College Road in Rawalpindi when the country was partitioned.
Reena Chhibber recalled her old days and told that she studied in Modern School. My four siblings also went to study in the same school. My brother and a sister attended Gordon College, located near Modern School.
Chhibber recalled that my elder siblings had Muslim friends who used to visit our house, as my father was a man of progressive views. There was no problem of any kind in the meeting with the boys and girls. Before partition there was no such issue between Hindus and Muslims. All this happened after the partition. “Though the partition of India was wrong, but now it has happened, the two countries should work together to ease visa restrictions for all of us,” he said.
The Pakistan High Commission in India has issued a three-month visa to Verma as a goodwill gesture when her family came to India during partition in 1947 when she was only 15 years old. Verma had applied for a Pakistani visa in 1965, but she failed to obtain it, as tensions between the two neighbors were high due to the war.
The elderly woman said that she had expressed her desire to go to her ancestral home on social media last year. Pakistani national Sajjad Haider contacted him on social media and sent pictures of his house in Rawalpindi. Recently, she again applied for a Pakistani visa, which was rejected. After this he told Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar about his desire. who facilitated his visa to visit his native city.
