PM directs FO to bring home other stranded Pakistanis as 14 reach home
Pakistan on Tuesday sent 72 stranded Indian passengers to India via the Wagah border following cancellation of the Samjhauta Express train owing to farmers’ rail blockade in Indian Punjab while Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also directed Foreign Office (FO) to immediately facilitate Pakistanis stranded in India due to the same rail blockade.
He also directed to provide whatever the stranded passengers needed and to keep his office updated on the matter.
Indian immigration officials received the 72 Indian passengers whose visas had expired at Attari. These passengers were to travel by Samjhauta Express on October 8 and 12 but they couldn’t as the train was cancelled by the India authorities.
India also ‘deported’ 15 Pakistani passengers after expiry of their visas. A Pakistan high commission official in New Delhi Ilyas Mehmood Nizami said that they would be sending 13 stranded Pakistani passengers on board Delhi-Lahore Dosti Bus.
India has cancelled Samjhauta Express two times in a row because of farmers’ rail blockade.
A railway official informed that further decision to run Delhi-Attari Express and receiving Samjhauta Express depended on the result of farmer bodies’ meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. “We are eagerly awaiting the outcome of talks so we can call our own meeting to decide further plans,” he said.
Meanwhile, fourteen Pakistanis stranded in India reached homeland by bus on Tuesday.