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Trip to see Bollywood idol ends in jail
Thu, November 20 2008
Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan copyThe father of Nasir Sultan, a 15-year-old Pakistani boy who has been imprisoned since August for entering India illegally to meet Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, is hopeful that the Punjab and Haryana High Court will soon order his son’s release.
The boy is at the juvenile jail in Punjab’s Faridkot town, about 250 km from Chandigarh, after he was arrested by the Border Security Force near the India-Pakistan border.
Nasir has been booked under the Foreigners Act and the Passport Act for illegally entering India. He told police he came to India to meet Shah Rukh and participate in a TV reality singing contest.
He was brought to the Amritsar prison earlier this month after Pakistani embassy officials arrived to complete formalities to secure his release along with that of other Pakistani nationals lodged in Indian jails.
“The court will hear my son’s case, and I am confident that they will order his immediate release as he is innocent,” Nasir’s father Sultan Zareen told IANS.
Nasir is a resident of Dir in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, that is witnessing intense fighting between the militants and security forces. He left his house on the morning of Aug. 14, saying he would return that evening, but called his parents a month later to tell them that he was in jail in India.
Leading human rights activist from Pakistan, Ansar Burney, who has taken up Nasir’s case before the high court in Chandigarh through city-based rights activist and lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal, said that India and Pakistan need to evolve a mechanism to return those who inadvertently cross the international border.

By Muhammad Najeeb

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