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Crossing all boundaries of religious faith, brotherhood and peace, a very narrow and desperate act of the neighboring country Pakistan has once again brought shame on it at the international level. A group of 104 Sikh pilgrims, who were preparing to come to India with their deep religious faith to visit India’s holy and historical pilgrimage site Sri Hemkund Sahib, were stopped at Faisalabad Airport in Pakistan. All these pilgrims had valid visas, passports officially issued by the Government of India and all the legal documents related to the journey were completely in order, yet they were stopped from boarding the plane at the last moment. Due to this inhuman and arbitrary decision, the much-awaited pilgrimage of Sikh devotees has not only been put in limbo, but they have also had to face huge financial losses. This incident has once again proved to what extent Pakistan’s administrative system is bent on creating unreasonable obstructions instead of respecting the religious sentiments of its own people and minorities, which has caused deep anger among the Sikh community all over the world.
According to information revealed by media reports, these 104 Sikh pilgrims, who were preparing for their journey to India from different parts of Pakistan for a long time, got a huge shock when they reached Faisalabad Airport to start their journey. As per rules, there is currently no direct air connectivity between India and Pakistan, and apart from this, the Attari-Wagah border land route between the two countries is also completely closed after the historic ‘Operation Sindoor’. In this situation, these devotees had planned to come to India through a third country i.e. United Arab Emirates, under which they had to take a flight from Faisalabad to Sharjah and from there to New Delhi. All of them had already booked airline tickets and also had valid visas for India. But as soon as they reached the immigration counter of the airport, Pakistani officials suddenly created a new and absurd problem and started demanding ‘No Objection Certificate’ i.e. NOC. The devotees tried hard to convince the officials that none of them are in any government service nor part of any organ of the government, all of them are pure common citizens having passport of their country and legal visa of India, hence there is no need for any other no objection certificate from them. But Pakistani authorities did not listen to him and stopped him from boarding the flight.
During this entire unwanted incident, there was a heated argument between the Sikh devotees present at the airport and the immigration officials. Papinder Singh, who was leading this group, while talking to the media, shared his pain and narrated his entire ordeal. He clarified that all the passengers in his group had valid passports, visas and all other travel documents. He had to catch a flight to Sharjah at 2:10 pm on Friday afternoon, through which he had to reach Delhi. He raised the question that when no condition of NOC was imposed at any level before the journey, then why was this issue raised suddenly as soon as we reached the airport? In a video from Faisalabad airport itself that has gone viral on social media, another Sikh devotee is seen extremely angry, asking what can NOC mean for common citizens? The devotee said that there is no criminal case registered against anyone in his group and they are all law-abiding peace-loving people, yet it is completely unjust to subject them to such mental harassment. Due to this stubbornness of the Pakistani authorities, an attempt has been made to scuttle their age-old religious desires, which has hurt their religious sentiments.
Due to this arbitrary attitude and stopping the Yatra at the last moment, these Sikh devotees have not only suffered mental agony but have also suffered huge financial loss. Due to expensive flight tickets, hotel booking and other arrangements, this entire group has incurred a huge loss of more than two crore Pakistani rupees. The devotees say that if the Pakistani authorities had allowed them to leave on time by their scheduled flights, they would have been on Indian soil as per the schedule by Friday evening and would have been able to complete their holy journey to Sri Hemkund Sahib peacefully. But due to administrative hurdles and dictatorship, all his hard work and capital went waste. The present situation is that clouds of deep uncertainty and crisis are looming over the further journey of all these 104 devotees. Expressing his grief, he has also urged the Pakistani administration that if they are not allowing air travel, then at least they should be allowed to enter India through the historic Attari-Wagah border so that they can complete their religious pilgrimage. However, it is well known that due to border tensions and closed roads, this option also does not seem practical at present, due to which the difficulties of these pilgrims have increased further.