Odishatv Bureau
Kochi: In a relief to three Pakistani children born to a Keralite woman, the Kerala High Court has stayed their deportation for two weeks and allowed them to stay with her in the state.

Their 29-year-old mother, Haseena, who hails from Kadirur in Thalassery, is relieved that her children, aged between four and ten, would not be separated from her at least for now, her lawyer and former state Law Secretary C Khalid said.

Haseena had petitioned the central government and the court seeking to declare her minor children as Indian citizens by descent as per 9(2) of the Citizenship Act being children of an Indian mother and as per 5(2) of the Act for registering them as citizen of India and prohibiting their deportation.

Khalid said the woman feared that if the children were forcibly deported they would become destitutes as their father, Shahid Mohiyudeen, an employee in a Karachi pan shop, with his meagre earnings would not be able to look after them.

Giving them temporary relief, Justice Antony Dominic on July 5 stayed the deportation of the children for two weeks.

Mohiyudeen`s father Moinudeen, who originally hailed from Malappuram, and Haseena`s father Kadar from Kadirur were friends working in a pan shop in Karachi.

As their friendship blossomed, the two decided that they should cement it by getting their children married.

As per the Shariat Law, the bride need not be present for the wedding and Haseena`s father solemnised it in Karachi in 2000. The groom then came to Kerala on a three-month visiting visa after which Haseena went to Pakistan, also on a three-month visa.

She was unable to return as she became pregnant, her counsel said.

Haseena stayed in Pakistan for 10 years without extending her visa and returned to Kerala with her children in March this year, a month before her passport was to expire, after Pakistani police ordered her to leave.

Her relatives, some of whom are well off, have promised to look after the children, who have since been admitted to a school in Kerala.

Haseena, who is not educated, says she is prepared to slog and look after the kids. "If they are sent back, their father will not be able to look after them," she said.

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