India returns runaway Pakistani boys

Posted 04 18 2008 6:17PM

KARACHI, Pakistan - Two boys who ran away from home and sneaked across the heavily guarded Indian border were back in Pakistan on Friday after Indian authorities swiftly deported them.

Azhar Ansari, 17, and Zohaib Ali, 11, shocked their relatives when they appeared on television April 14 telling Indian police that they had run away because their parents beat them with sticks to make them go to school. They were apparently headed for the home of a relative in the Indian city of Jodhpur.

Relatives had been looking for the boys for nearly a week.

India and Pakistan are bitter rivals and some people who have illegally crossed the border — whether deliberately or by accident — have spent many years in jail.

But police in the Indian state of Rajahstan, where the two young cousins were arrested last week, said they would likely be deported quickly if their tale turned out to be true.

"We always read in newspapers that many Pakistanis are languishing in Indian jails for crossing the border illegally and it is no less than a miracle that my son and nephew have come back safely and so early," Azra Nadir, the mother of the elder runaway, told The Associated Press by telephone late Thursday.

She thanked officials on both sides for ending the family's anguish.

Indian border guards handed over the boys at a frontier crossing on Thursday, said Capt. Fazal Mahmood, a spokesman for Pakistan's paramilitary Rangers. The Rangers, who guard the Pakistani side of the frontier, were to escort the pair back home to the southern province of Sindh later Friday.

The boys' 10-day escapade began when they left their homes in Tando Allahyar, some 150 miles north of Karachi, on April 7 to go to school.

The next day — after the boys failed to return home — the parents raised the alarm.

They learned what happened to the boys when they saw TV footage of the boys telling Indian police how they had run away and dug under a barbed-wire border fence. Indian police said the boys told them they had intended to go to the home of relative in Jodhpur.

Azhar's father, Nadir Ansari, doesn't deny beating his son to try to boost his grades and job prospects. But he sounded more conciliatory after his release.

"I will be compassionate in trying to persuade Azhar to continue his studies," said Ansari, who runs a store for electrical goods. "If he is not willing, I will take him with me to work in the shop."