Pakistani national Tahira Zahoor’s wait for Indian citizenship has finally ended — 13 years after she arrived in the country to marry Qadian resident Maqbool Ahmad and five years after she applied for the citizenship.

Maqbool Sunday said the Union Ministry of Home Affairs has cleared Tahira’s file for Indian citizenship.

Tahira, who married Maqbool of the Ahmadiyya community in December 2003 after arriving in India in October that year, was to marry Maqbool towards the end of December 2001. But the December 13, 2001 Parliament attack derailed her plans, with India snapping all road, rail and air connectivity with Pakistan.

Tahira, a resident of Faisalabad in Pakistan, could get a visa to travel to India only in 2003, but not before political bigwigs, including former PM I K Gujral, pushed her case.

Maqbool cited a communication from the Punjab home department to Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner about a “citizenship certificate”of Tahira that the department reportedly received last month. He said “some district-level formalities would have to be completed and Tahira would finally become an Indian citizen”.

The communication from the state home department reportedly states that Tahira be handed over the certificate and the acknowledgement be sent to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

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