Swaraj touched Pak hearts too: In memories forever, says Edhi Foundation trustee

Amritsar: Across India’s hostile border with Pakistan, a man in Karachi will keep Sushma Swaraj in his memories.

Fasil Edhi, the managing trustee of Edhi Foundation and son of world-famous philanthropist Abdul Saddar Edhi, worked with the former external affairs minister to ensure the return of Geeta — the speech- and hearing-impaired girl who had crossed over to Pakistan in 2000 and was brought back to India because of Swaraj’s proactiveness in 2015. “It was shocking to know about her demise,” he tells TOI over the phone. “She will be in our memories forever.”

Faisal says his foundation was in touch with Swaraj due to Geeta. “My mother, Bilkis Edhi, personally met the late minister when she had gone India to hand over Geeta,” he says.

Jas Uppal, UK-based founder of NGO Justice Upheld who has taken up cases of several Indians trapped in the UAE, said he had been “regularly in touch” with Sushma on behalf of Indian nationals subjected to human rights abuses abroad. “She had been very responsive and understood the importance of human rights,” he says.

Among other cases, Sushma had responded to the information sought by Justice Upheld in relation to slain Indian national Sarabjit Singh who was lodged in Kot Lakhpat jail, Lahore, Uppal said.

Sarabjit Singh, an Indian who had been jailed in Pakistan in 1990 and killed in a prison there in 2013, might not have been able to return him, but his sister Dalbir Kaur met the former Union minister at least 10 times, the first meeting being at the BJP’s office in Delhi in 2005. She recalls Swaraj as “accessible and very helpful”. “I met her more than 10 times and she never disappointed me,” she says.

Later, Dalibir took up the cases of many Indians with Swaraj, including the case of Kirpal Singh, whose body arrived from Pakistan to India on Sushma’s intervention. “I also met her for the release of Kulbushan Jadav and bringing the body of a Banga resident from the Philippines,” Dalbir says.

Mumbai resident Hamid Ansari was one of the more recent people in whose rescue Swaraj was instrumental. Hamid had snuck into the neighbouring country in 2012 to meet a woman he had befriended on social media, but he was caught there and convicted of espionage. Though his term ended in December 2018, he could not return for want of documents. At this juncture, Swaraj intervened, after Hamind’s mother, Fauzia Ansari, approached her. “My family survives because of her,” she says.

Took up Hindu girls’ cause in Pak

Former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had gotten into a heated debate on Twitter with Pakistan former information and broadcasting minister Fawad Chaudhry in March this year, after she learnt of two Hindu girls being abducted in Pakistan and being forced to convert to Islam