They Fell In Love In A Video Game. Now Both Are In Jail
The couple could face several years in prison
By Hari Kumar and Mujib Mashal
RABUPURA, India — Their love affair across one of the world’s most heavily guarded borders had begun on the virtual battlefields of a video game where players bond over having one another’s back against bloody enemy ambushes to become the last survivors.
But when Seema Ghulam Haider, 27, a married Pakistani Muslim, sneaked into India with her four children to be with Sachin Meena, 22, a Hindu man, their time together was brief. About two months after they started secretly living in the same neighborhood outside New Delhi, the couple ran into the Indian authorities.
This week, Haider and her children were arrested on charges of having illegally entered India; Meena and his father were also arrested, on charges that amount to little short of conspiring to shelter an enemy.
“I don’t want to go back,” Haider told reporters as she was taken away by police, her befuddled children next to her. “I want to marry Sachin. I love him a lot. I left everything for him.”
Meena also affirmed his love.
“We just want the government to let us marry and build a family,” he said as he and his father were arrested.
Among the hurdles the lovers face, perhaps the biggest is the acrimony between their respective homelands.
India and neighboring Pakistan — a country that was carved out of India in 1947 as the last act of British colonial rule — have fought many wars. And in both countries, interfaith relations have become a minefield.
Haider and Meena met in 2019, in the virtual battlefields of the hugely popular game PUBG (pronounced pub-gee).
Haider had been living in Karachi, where she had four children with her husband, Ghulam Haider. Haider’s cross-border romance with Meena appears to have started after her husband, a laborer, moved to Saudi Arabia for a job.
Nearly four years into their long-distance relationship, Haider and Meena met for the first time in March in Nepal. She returned to Pakistan and he to India a week later — with the promise they would reunite.
The second time Haider left for Nepal, in May, she brought her children — and it was clear she had no intention of returning.
Unbeknown to her husband, who is still living in Saudi Arabia, Haider had sold her house to fund her trip.
The couple could face several years in prison, most likely followed by deportation for Haider and her children. – New York Times
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