Seema was arrested by local police for entering India illegally. (File)
Uttar Pradesh Special Director General of Police Prashant Kumar on Wednesday said it would not be appropriate to say if Pakistani citizen Seema Haider, who entered India illegally in May and is staying with her partner in Noida, is a spy "unless we have enough proof".
He evaded a direct reply when asked if Seema would be deported, and also denied any security lapse along the porous the Indo-Nepal border through which she admittedly entered India.
Seema (30) and her Indian partner Sachin Meena (22) were questioned by the Uttar Pradesh Police's Anti-Terrorist Squad on Monday and Tuesday. They were arrested by the local police in Greater Noida on July 4 but granted bail by a court on July 7.
On the ATS questioning, the state police said two video cassettes, four mobile phones, five "authorised" Pakistani passports and one "unused passport" with incomplete name and address, and an identity card have been received from Seema Haider.
Asked if Seema could be a Pakistan spy, Special DGP Prashant Kumar asserted nothing could be said so early. "The matter is related to two countries. Till we have enough proof, it would not be appropriate to say anything in this regard," he said.
In her media interactions since her bail, Seema has been saying she entered India through the Nepal border and travelled to Noida in a bus to be with Sachin whom she met online while playing PUBG game.
Asked whether the entry of a Pakistani citizen in India through the Nepal border was a security lapse, Mr Kumar said, "This is not so. Our border (with Nepal) is porous. No passport is needed there. Nothing is written on anyone's face." Mr Kumar also said no team is being sent to Nepal to probe how she entered India. But the senior officer evaded a direct reply when asked if Seema could be deported. "The law is there in this regard and it will be followed. Action is being taken as per the legal mandate." On the ATS questioning Seema and Sachin, the officer said, "All agencies are doing their work." The couple had first got in touch in 2020 over online game PUBG. They exchanged their WhatsApp numbers after 15 days of online gaming, the UP police said in a statement on Wednesday, summarising the findings of the ATS questioning of the duo over Monday and Tuesday.
Police said Sachin and Seema met for the first time in person in March this year in Kathmandu, Nepal where they stayed together from March 10 to 17. Seema returned to Nepal from Pakistan -- taking the Karachi-Dubai route -- on a 15-day tourist visa on May 10.
In Nepal, she reached from Kathmandu to Pokhara and stayed for the night. Seema then took a bus from Pokhara on the morning of May 12 and entered India from Roopandehi-Khunwa (Khunwa) border district Siddharthnagar.
Travelling via Lucknow and Agra, she reached the Rabupura cut, Gautam Buddha Nagar on March 13. Sachin had already taken a rented room in Rabupura where they started living together, the UP police said.
Seema was arrested by local police for entering India illegally and Sachin was held for sheltering illegal immigrants. However, they both were granted bail by a local court on July 7 and have been living together along with her four children in a house in the Rabupura area.
Seema has also said she does not wish to go back to Pakistan and wants to live with Sachin. She also claimed to have turned a Hindu.
Pakistan's intelligence agencies have informed the country's government that "love" is the "only" factor that led the mother of four to sneak into India to live with a Hindu man whom she befriended through an online game platform, a media report said on Monday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)