Bhopal: Pakistani boy Ramzan who was staying here in the shelter home for about two and a half years on Wednesday left for Bangladesh on Wednesday to join his father there. He was willing to reach Pakistan where his mother is living, but she had refused to come to Bhopal to take him back. Though, there were speculations that Ramzan would be sent to his mother Razia Begum living in Karachi city of Pakistan but the Bal Kalyan Samiti issued orders to send him to Bangladesh to his father. Accompanied by a member of Samiti Ramzan left for Kolkatta from here from where another organization Sanlap would take him to his father in Bangladesh.
When Geeta came home in October, Ramzan, who has been living in the Umeed shelter home in Bhopal hoped he too would be able to go home to Pakistan. The shelter home and NGOs in both countries had tracked his mother and got Ramzan to speak to her on phone and through video chats. But just when Ramzan thought he would finally get to go home his mother Razia refused to visit him in Bhopal, saying she felt the “atmosphere in India was not friendly to Muslims” and that she was not sure about her safety.
At 9.30 on Wednesday morning, Ramzan with a ‘General English’ book, ‘reading grammar’, but did not look particularly interested. “I want to go back to my mother,” he says stoically. He did not look up from his book and did not want to speak further.
Ramzan’s story, put together from sustained questioning by the police and authorities at the shelter home, is this: After Ramzan’s parents separated in 2009, his father, Mohammed Kazol Khan, a tailor, took him to Bangladesh, where his grandparents lived. Once there, Khan took to driving trucks and married again. Ramzan’s stepmother allegedly accused him of theft and beat him up frequently, and to escape the harassment, he left home.
