Published: December 23, 2023 6:03 PM IST 
Cross-Border Love Stories: “Love transcends all barriers of religion, region, caste, age, and border”, this may seem like a cheesy monologue from a Shahrukh Khan film with no basis in reality but the abundance of real-life cross-border love stories we have witnessed this year have proven that real life often throws up more fantastical stories than fiction itself.
The trend of forbidden love stories started in May this year, when Seema Haider, a 34-year-old Pakistani mother-of-four entered illegally into India, along with her four kids, via the Nepal border to marry her lover Sachin Meena–an Uttar Pradesh resident she met befriended back in 2019 on popular mobile game PUBG. This was soon followed by India’s Anju Thomas leaving her husband and two kids behind and travelling to Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where she married her lover Nasrullah and changed her religion to Islam.
As 2023 winds down, we take a look at some of these heartwarming yet controversial stories of forbidden love where these lovestruck people not only smashed societal norms but literal borders to be with their paramours.
It all started with the OG cross-border love story of Seema Haider and Sachin Meena when the beautiful Pakistani ‘bhabhi’ crossed into India, albeit illegally, via the Indo-Nepal border to marry her lover in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida.
Seema Ghulam Haider, a Pakistani woman who was married to Ghulam Haider and mother of four kids, met Sachin Meena—a Uttar Pradesh resident— in 2019 while playing popular shooter PUBG. Over time, the duo became friends and fell in love and earlier this year, Seema entered illegally into India via Nepal along with her four children to be with her lover.
An FIR was also lodged against Seema Haider for entering India without visa, she is now living at Sachin's house in Noida after getting bail.
After which the video was trending on instagram.#Don3 #seemahaidar #sachinmeena pic.twitter.com/JdJzvcGOLU
— Epik (@BabuRaoCrypto) August 10, 2023
Sachin and Seema reportedly got married at a temple in Nepal. Currently, the cross-border lovebirds are living happily together at Sachin’s Greater Noida home.
The couple is very active on social media and their tik-toks have turned them into nation’s darlings, adored and loved by millions.
Seema Haider ❤️Sachin meena pic.twitter.com/q0mJyL67Ul
— Chandan Kr Sharma (@Chandan0040) August 9, 2023
Seema Haider has also recently signed a movie-based on her love story in which she is also featured in a prominent role.
The film, titled ‘‘Karachi to Noida’– which details the heartwarming cross-border love affair of Seema Haider and Sachin Meena– is reportedly being produced by a Amit Jani, a Meerut-based film producer under the banner of Jani Firefox Production House.
A Noida based film-maker is making a movie on Seema Haider and Sachin's lover story. pic.twitter.com/RLv8CAIgs2
— Shafaque Alam (@shafaquealamTOI) August 10, 2023
Earlier this year, the production house shared a video of the audition on social media showing actors being auditioned for various roles in the upcoming film.
Seema Haider had expressed her desire to work in movies after being given a clean chit by the Uttar Pradesh ATS. She has been offered to play the role of RAW agent in the film.
A similar tale of forbidden love unfolded around a month later when Anju Thomas– an Indian mother-of-two travelled to Pakistan, where she converted to Islam, changed her name to Fatima, and married her lover Nasrullah in a remote village of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of the neighbouring country.
Video: Indian girl #Anju with her Pakistani friend Nasrullah Khan in his home district Dir pic.twitter.com/jJJaCmxq1U
— Naimat Khan (@NKMalazai) July 25, 2023
Anju, who was born in Kailor village in Uttar Pradesh and lived in the Alwar district of Rajasthan, travelled to Pakistan legally from India via the Wagah-Attari border in July this year. She was granted a 30-day visa, valid for Upper Dir only.
Anju is married to Arvind, who is in Rajasthan. They have a 15-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son.
Arvind has filed an FIR against his runaway wife and her Pakistani lover in Alwar district of Rajasthan.
Late last month, Anju returned to India and revealed that she planned to divorce her Indian husband and take her two kids back with her to Pakistan. The 35-year-old dropped off at the Attari-Wagah border in Punjab’s Amritsar by her Pakistani husband Nasrullah– five months after she abruptly left her first husband and two kids behind and travelled to Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and married him.
#WATCH | Amritsar, Punjab: Anju, who had travelled to Pakistan in July returns to India
"I am happy…I have no other comments", says Anju pic.twitter.com/vKPUTsx4jx
— ANI (@ANI) November 29, 2023
Anju – who now goes by the name of Fatima after converting to Islam – on July 25 married her 29-year-old friend Nasrullah, whose home is in the Upper Dir district in the province. They became friends on Facebook in 2019.
While sharing her thoughts before departing from Pakistan, Anju @ Fatima expressed, 'I received immense respect during my time in Pakistan, and there was never a moment where I lacked anything.'
Having entered Pakistan on a tourist visa, she spent about five months in Pakistan… pic.twitter.com/7o4StWKZV9
— Ravinder Singh Robin ਰਵਿੰਦਰ ਸਿੰਘ رویندرسنگھ روبن (@rsrobin1) November 29, 2023
Amid the seemingly story-book endings of the Seema-Sachin and Anju-Nasrullah love stories, an Indo-Bangladesh love story emerged, albeit with a dark twist. The story is of an Uttar Pradesh man, Ajay, who met Julie, a married Bangladeshi woman, on social media in 2017. The couple got married in 2022 when Julie came to India with her 11-year-old daughter, Halima after her husband’s passing.
However, this seemingly Bollywood-esque tale of love was revealed to have a dark twist after after Ajay’s mother approached the cops for help to bring her son back from Bangladesh.
According to her, she had received a picture of his son, injured and drenched in blood, from a Bangladeshi phone number.
Earlier, it was reported that after getting married and living together in UP’s Moradabad for over a year, Ajay and Julie had recently travelled to Bangladesh to meet Julie’s parents. However, when Ajay recently returned to his hometown Moradabad, he denied going to Bangladesh.
Ajay told the cops that he had been living near the West Bengal border in a rented house and never went to Bangladesh. A senior police officer, however, claimed that Ajay had previously told the cops that he was going to Bangladesh, adding that they are keeping a close watch on his activities.
Ajay had befriended Julie Akhtar on Facebook in 2017 and later found out that she was from Bangladesh, already married and mother to a young girl. The duo became good friends and later fell in love.
After Julie’s husband died in 2022, she arrived in India along with her 11-year-old daughter Halima, and got married to Ajay in UP’s Moradabad. The wedding was conducted as per Hindu rituals and it was reported that Julie had converted to Hinduism.
The couple stayed in Moradabad for a while but Ajay had to leave for Karnataka for work. However, during his brief stay in the southern state, he received news of a quarrel between his newly-wed bride and his mother and found out that Julie had left following the tussle.
Ajay, a cab driver by profession, returned home and got into an argument with his mother who reportedly kicked him out of house. Ajay then reportedly left for Bangladesh. However, other reports have claimed that Julie took him to Bangladesh to meet her mother.
Meanwhile, Ajay’s mother, Sunita, has alleged that her son was the victim of a ‘conspiracy’ by Julie and she has illegally taken her son to Bangladesh for some nefarious reason not yet known.
According to Sunita, days after Ajay travelled to Bangladesh, she received a picture of, injured and soaked in blood, from a Bangladeshi phone number. She said that Ajay also called his sister and asked for money, saying that he was in some kind of trouble.
Sunita had also alleged that Julie had taken all her wedding jewellery to Bangladesh and wanted to swindle the family’s money and had not intention of coming back to India with Ajay.
In yet another rerun of the famous Seema Haider case, a Bangladeshi mother-of-three arrived in Uttar Pradesh’s Shravasti district, however, unlike Haider, she faced disappointment and heartbreak upon arrival as she found out that man was already married.
The woman, Dilruba Sharmi, a 32-year-old mother-of-three from Bangladesh, arrived in India on September 26 along with with her three children to meet 27-year-old Abdul Kareem, a resident of Bhartha Roshangarh village in the district’s Malhipur area, police had said.
They said that Sharmi, a widow who worked as a beautician, met Abdul Kareem on the internet and the duo soon fell in love. Kareem works as a chef in Bahrain. Sharmi’s husband had died during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Giving details, an official said that Dilruba, along with her three children– aged 15, 12 and seven– arrived in Lucknow on September 26 on tourist visa.
On the same day, Kareem also landed in Uttar Pradesh capital and the five of them then boarded a bus and reached Bahraich where they stayed in a hotel for two days before Kareem’s native village, the official said.
However, Kareem, who had told Sharmi that he was unmarried, was confronted by his wife and villagers informed the police and Sashastra Seema Bal officials.
Security agencies also swung into action and launched an inquiry. Following this, Dilruba Sharmi decided to return to her country.
Malhipur SHO Dharmendra Kumar told news agency PTI that the woman came to India on a tourist visa and police did not find any criminal angle in her arrival into the country.
“No criminal angle was found in the probe. Her tourist visa was valid. She returned to Lucknow on Saturday and probably left for Bangladesh from there. Kareem also left, saying he was going back to Bahrain,” he said.
The woman left on her own, saying she would return to her country, he added.
And just when we thought that we won’t be seeing anymore instances of “forbidden” love stories unfold this year, a Pakistani woman, Javeria Khanum, arrived in India earlier this month to marry her fiance Sameer Khan in West Bengal’s Kolkata.
Javeria crossed into India via the Attari-Wagah border where her fiance was awaiting her arrival to the beats of ‘dhol’. Khanum has been granted a 45-day visa which she had been trying to get for the last five years.
#WATCH | Amritsar, Punjab: A Pakistani woman, Javeria Khanum arrived in India (at the Attari-Wagah border) to marry her fiancé Sameer Khan, a Kolkata resident. She was welcomed in India to the beats of 'dhol'.
She says, "I am extremely happy…I want to convey my special thanks… pic.twitter.com/E0U00TIYMX
— ANI (@ANI) December 5, 2023
“I am extremely happy and wish to convey my special thanks to the Government of India for granting me a stay here. We have been in a relationship for the past five years. We were trying to secure a visa for a long time and finally, it happened. I have been granted a 45-day visa,” Javeria told news agency ANI.
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