Jaipur, April 26 – After a long struggle of four years, Shaitan Singh from Rajasthan will now have to wait again for marriage, as he has to go to Pakistan to get married. It is worth mentioning that Shaitan Singh got engaged to Kesar Kanwar from Sindh province of Pakistan four years ago. The groom’s family had to struggle for years just to get a visa, but when everything was finally done, they faced another obstacle to the wedding when the government closed the Attari border.
Fully prepared to tie the knot in Pakistan’s city of Amarkot on April 30, Shaitan Singh left for the Attari border with his family and ‘baraat’ on Tuesday from Barmer district. But by the time they reached there, authorities had stopped them from crossing the border as India has ordered the immediate closure of the Attari-Wagah border as part of a series of retaliatory measures following the tragic Pahalgam terror attack on Wednesday.
“We had waited a long time for this day, after years of our efforts, the visa was granted recently on February 18,” said Shaitan Singh, the groom’s cousin. Surendra Singh said the situation has left both the families disappointed. “Our relatives from Pakistan had come here but they had to go back. We are very disappointed. Terrorist attacks cause a lot of damage. Relationships deteriorate. Traffic on the border stops.”
Shaitan Singh, a resident of Indroi village in Barmer district, has a visa till May 12, giving the family a glimmer of hope that if the border opens in time, the wedding can still take place.
“Whatever the terrorists did was wrong. The wedding has been disrupted. What can we do? It is a matter of borders,” said the groom. He said the cross-border marriage was arranged through family ties, which is a common practice among the Sodha Rajput community.
The community has a sizeable population in Pakistan’s Sindh province. Many of them prefer to marry within the community and often seek cross-border marriages to preserve their cultural traditions. Shaitan Singh, who works in the finance sector, is one of many people from the region who have relatives in Pakistan. For now, his family is waiting in the hope that the situation will improve and the border will reopen in time for the wedding to go ahead. India on Wednesday downgraded diplomatic ties with Pakistan following the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir. The Pahalgam attack left 26 people, most of them tourists, dead in gunfire. The Cabinet Committee on Security meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, included suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, cancelling visa services for Pakistani nationals and immediately closing the Attari land-transit post.