Sitting in her one-room house and surrounded by her children and grandchildren, Hamida Bano had a piece of advice for job seekers abroad: “Always use the appropriate means if you want to avoid what I went through.” Hamida was speaking to PTI at her place in Kurla, central Mumbai, hours after arriving in the city on Wednesday. The 73-year-old woman spent nearly 22 years in Pakistan after an agent lured her to the neighboring country with the lure of a “good” job in the Gulf.
“Mumbai looks so different now,” Hamida exclaims. A bit of luck and a lot of hard work by two activists in Pakistan and another in Mumbai helped Hamida reunite with her family.
“When I reached the Wagah border in Punjab from Lahore, I was very happy to see the Indian tricolor. After more than two decades, I was excited to finally enter my country and visit my city Mumbai,” said Hamida.
Hamida, a resident of Kurla (East) Kasaiwada, came in contact with an agent in Vikhroli in 2002 who offered her a domestic job in Dubai. The agent took Hamida and four other women to Pakistan and handed them over to two men.
After being held in an undisclosed location for some time, Hamida was left to fend for herself in Hyderabad, the capital city of Sindh province. But she had no documents to prove her Indian identity as Pakistani agents had taken away all her documents, Hamida recalls.
Speaking to PTI at her 10 ft X 10 ft house, Hamida said, “I want to make people aware that they should be allowed to use proper channels to find jobs and earn money abroad. Many women like me from India and Bangladesh who have been cheated by agents are stranded in Pakistan. Hamida, who has two sons, two daughters and many grandchildren, said that a fruit seller took care of her all these years. “He was very good. I get angry when someone speaks against India,’ she said.
A meeting with an activist, Waliullah Maruf, in 2022 gave him hope. After learning that he was from India, Maruf searched for activists in Mumbai and came in contact with Khaflan Sheikh through social media in 2020.
Shaikh then shared Hamida’s video among his acquaintances and one of them told him that his daughter Yaseem Kurla lives in Kasaiwada. He contacted Yaseem and connected with Hamida via video call. PTI reported at that time that Hamida was being sought.
Yaseem said the PTI report brightened the prospects of his mother’s return as her story reached a much wider audience and it became easier to document her through official channels.
“We thank PTI. We were informed by someone from Pakistan that my mother will reach Wagah border on December 16 and asked to reach there,” she said.
Yaseem said that the Indian embassy in Pakistan had prepared his mother’s passport and thanked the Pakistani authorities for their help at every step.
“My father Hanif died in 2002. We are happy that our mother is alive and back home. Earlier she went to work as a domestic worker in countries like Qatar,” said Yaseem.
Sheikh, who was instrumental in Hamida’s return, said, “Although she was found in 2022, it took another two years to get her back to Kurla.”
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