Reena Chhibber Varma, 90-Year-Old Indian Woman, in Pakistan To Visit Ancestral Home in Rawalpindi

Lahore, July 16: A 90-year-old Indian woman on Saturday arrived here via Wagah-Attari border to visit her ancestral town Rawalpindi in Pakistan. Moist-eyed Reena Chhibber Varma, after her arrival, immediately left for her hometown Rawalpindi, where she will visit her ancestral dwelling Prem Niwas, her school, and childhood friends.

In a video she uploaded on social media, Varma said her family was living on the Devi College Road in Rawalpindi when the Partition took place. “I studied at the Modern School. My four siblings had also gone to the same school. My brother and a sister also studied at the Gorden College located near the Modern School," she recalled.

Watch: Reena Chhibber Varma, 90-Year-Old Indian Woman, in Pakistan To Visit Ancestral Home in Rawalpindi

"My elder siblings had Muslim friends who would come to our home as my father was a man of progressive ideas and had no issue of meetings of boys and girls. Before Partition, there was not any issue of Hindu and Muslim thing. This happened after the Partition. Although the Partition of India was wrong, now that it has happened, both the countries should work together to ease visa restrictions for all of us,” she stressed.

The Pakistan High Commission in India, in a goodwill gesture, has issued a three-month visa to Varma, who was only 15 years of age when her family moved to India during the Partition in 1947.

Varma had applied for a Pakistani visa in 1965 but failed to get it because of high tension between the two neighbours because of the war. The elderly woman said she had expressed her desire to visit her ancestral home on social media last year.

A Pakistani citizen, Sajjad Haider, contacted her on social media and sent her images of her home in Rawalpindi. Recently she again applied for a Pakistani visa which was denied.

She then tagged her desire to Pakistan's Minister of State on Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar who facilitated her visa to visit her ancestral town.

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