Pakistani boy Ramzan living in a shelter home here for about two and a half years on Wednesday left for Bangladesh to join his father there. He was willing to reach Pakistan where his mother is living, but she had refused to come to Bhopal to take him back.
Notably, Geeta, the Indian girl stranded in Pakistan for 14 years, was lucky enough to reach India and she was accorded a rousing reception in October last year. She is at present staying at the shelter home in Indore, as her parents are yet to be traced.
Though there were speculations that Ramzan would be sent to his mother Razia Begum living in Karachi city of Pakistan but the child welfare committee issued orders to send him to Bangladesh to his father. Accompanied by a member of the committee, Ramzan left for Kolkata from here from where another organisation Sanlap would take him to his father in Bangladesh.
When Geeta came in October, Ramzan, who has been living in the Umeed shelter home in Bhopal hoped he too would be able to go home to Pakistan. The shelter home and NGOs in both countries had tracked his mother and got Ramzan to speak to her on phone and through video chats. But just when Ramzan thought he would finally get to go home his mother Razia refused to visit him in Bhopal, saying she felt the "atmosphere in India was not friendly to Muslims" and that she was not sure about her safety.
At 9.30 on Wednesday morning, Ramzan sits with a 'General English' book, reading grammar, but doesn't look particularly interested. "I want to go back to my mother," he says stoically. He doesn't look up from his book and doesn't want to speak further.
Ramzan's story, put together from sustained questioning by the police and authorities at the shelter home, is this: After Ramzan's parents separated in 2009, his father, Mohammed Kazol Khan, a tailor, took him to Bangladesh, where his grandparents lived. Once there, Khan took to driving trucks and married again. Ramzan's stepmother allegedly accused him of theft and beat him up frequently, and to escape the harassment, he left home.
Ramzan claims that after he strayed across the border into India, he went to Ranchi, Mumbai and Delhi, before ending up at the Bhopal railway station. later, the government railway police shifted him to the shelter home.