Uzma at the inauguration of her beauty parlour in east Delhi

NEW DELHI: Uzma Ahmed — called “daughter of India” by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj — was 27 when she was kidnapped, sedated and forced to marry at gunpoint in Buner, Pakistan. Living like a prisoner in one of the remotest parts of trouble-torn Khyber Pukhtunkhwa district, she miraculously managed to reach the Indian high commission and was brought back to India in 2017.

After a two-year-long struggle of trying to get over her trauma, Uzma has now decided to transform her pain into a journey of healing. As a first step, she has opened her own beauty parlour in the heart of Seelampur, northeast Delhi.

Named after her younger daughter, Falak, the parlour was inaugurated on Wednesday. She has a staff of two women, who too have been victims of assault.

“This is a small but crucial step for us,” Uzma told TOI. “Living each day with the scars of my past had made life miserable. I had to move on for the sake of my daughters. Now, there is no going back.”

Uzma’s nightmare began after she fell in love with a Pakistani, Tahir Ali, in Malaysia, and went with him to his village in Pakistan.

After Pak trauma, she ‘makes up’ for lost time

Even after being rescued from captivity in Pakistan and now having a beauty parlour of her own in Delhi, Uzma Ahmed’s struggles are far from over. She is now seeking to get better treatment for her daughter who has thalassemia. She hopes that the parlour will help in generating funds for the treatment.

“It’s been 14 years now that I have been living away from my family. My father is an NRI and lives abroad and ever since I’ve moved away, there has been no communication between us. I have always fought all battles by myself but the loneliness eats me up,” she said.

Uzma had gone to Malaysia for pursuing a course in business studies, which she had funded herself. “By that time, I had two daughters from my first husband,” she said.

There, she fell in love with Tahir Ali, who claimed to love her back. “But behind this facade, he hatched a conspiracy. He took me to his village in Pakistan saying it was beautiful and since I trusted him completely, I didn’t even read about the place on Google,” she sighed.

Stepping into the village, Buner, was the beginning of the nightmare. “The houses were weird and so were the people. It was like a death well, where even most Pakistanis would think twice before going,” she said.

It was not long after she reached Buner that she found out about Ali’s previous marriage and four children. Shattered, she tried to escape but got caught. Ali allegedly sedated and traumatised her. A few days later, she was forced to marry Ali at gunpoint. Trapped in a torturous marriage, she kept trying to escape in vain until one day when her attempts bore fruit and she managed to reach the Indian high commission there.

She returned to India after a brief legal battle. She gives all credit for her rescue to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. “She was god sent for me. She told me that I was India’s daughter and that there was nothing I should worry about. If at all I am able to stand on my feet today, it is also because of her emotional support,” said Uzma.

Uzma is also looking forward to her upcoming biopic. “It has been kept on hold till the elections. After the polls, the star cast would be decided and shooting will begin. The world will know what I lived through,” she said.

