Probe after 167 Pakistanis go ‘missing’ in India’s Bihar state

Patna: Authorities in India’s Bihar state have ordered investigations, after discovering that 173 foreign nationals — including 167 from Pakistan alone — have gone missing during religious trips to a northern district.

The visitors arrived in Bihar at different intervals overthe past 25 years, but currently there is no information about them.

Officials said all of them had come to Gopalganj, a small district in northern Bihar bordering Uttar Pradesh state, on the missionary visa — one of the 18 types of vissa issued by the Indian government to people seeking entry for religious reasons, or those looking to join a foreign organisation in India while doing government of India-approved missionary work.

The visa is issued for a single entry into India.

The disappearances came to light after a local resident sought details from the government, through the Right to Information Act.

According to information provided by the office of the district superintendent of police, at least 167 of the foreign nationals missing after visiting Gopalganj were from Pakistan. Of the remaining six, five came from Uzbekistan while another came from Russia.

“We are verifying the facts,” Gopalganj district Superintendent of Police Manoj Kumar Tiwari told this correspondent over the phone on Saturday.

Tiwari said he was holding discussions with the local district magistrate and had ordered an investigation into their “mysterious disappearance”.

Local residents wondered why so many Pakistan nationals would choose to visit Gopalganj district when it had no sites of particular religious importance — such as Ajmer Sharif, Khwaja Garib Nawaz, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti or Khwaja Nizamuddin Dargah elsewhere.

“Gopalganj only has Madhavlal ka Mazar as a religious site. We are wondering why so many people would be interested in visiting the place and what kind of religious activities they must have been involved in,” asked district Waqf Committee secretary AH Siddiqui.

According to him, most of the local Muslim villagers settled in Karachi after the partition of India. “So they keep coming to this town to look after the landed properties of their ancestors or meet the neighbours. But so many people coming to this place on religious tour appear strange when this district has nothing important to show in the name of religious activities,” he wondered.

The revelation assumes significance in the light of ongoing talks about the Indian government planning to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to identify the outsiders.

Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself rejected the NRC talks as “rumours” being spread by the Opposition, the protests over the issue continue in India at regular intervals.

“I want to tell the 1.3 billion citizens of India that since my government has come to power, since 2014, there has been no discussion on NRC anywhere. Only after the SC order, this exercise was done for Assam. Lies are being spread,” the PM had told a rally held in Delhi last month.

He added, “We haven’t made this law [NRC], it has not come in Parliament, nor the Cabinet, nor have any rules been formulated.”

Strangely, federal home minister Amit Shah had on November 20 told the Parliament that NRC would be implemented nationwide.