Partition separated siblings in India and Pakistan reunites

Islamabad: A man from the Sikh community, Amarjit Singh, met his sister Kulsoom Akhtar, who is of Muslim faith and is now in Pakistan, after 75 years. The overwhelming union on Wednesday, at Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, happened after both were separated during Partition, PTI reported.

During Partition, Singh's Muslim parents left him in India and migrated to Pakistan.

Singh reached Pakistan through the Attari-Wagah border with a visa to meet Kulsoom in possession.

Kulsoom, meanwhile, travelled from her hometown in Faisalabad along with her son Shahzad Ahmed and other family members to meet her brother. The sister and the chairbound brother hugged and cried.

Kulsoom told Pakistan's Express Tribune that their parents migrated to Pakistan from Jalandhar in 1947, leaving her brother and a sister.

She was born in Pakistan, and from her childhood, she had heard about her siblings in India from her mother. Her mother used to cry whenever she remembered her missing children, she said.

She continued that when a friend of her father came to Pakistan from India, her mother told him about her son and daughter along with the location of their house.

Sardar Dara Singh then visited her house in Padawan village and informed her that her son was alive, but her daughter was dead.

When the friend returned to India and conducted searches, he learned that the sister had died, but the brother still lived. In 1947, the son was adopted by a Sikh family and was named Amarjit Singh.

Singh said that when he first learned that his birth parents were Muslims and were in Pakistan, he was shocked. But he came to the understanding that many families were separated during the Partition.

PTI reports that this is the second instance in which the Kartarpur Corridor reunites a family. In May, a woman born in a Sikh family who was adopted and raised by a Muslim couple met her brothers from India at Kartarpur.