Pakistani student deported without sound reasons

LONDON: A final year BBA student from Pakistan studying in a Newcastle institution was forcibly deported from the UK early last week on the charge that he had worked for more than the permitted hours.

Those who come here on student visa are allowed to work for only 20 hours a week and anyone found violating the law in most cases is normally warned off with a reprimand but has never before been deported in the fashion that the Pakistani student was subjected to.

The student in question was reportedly woken up by the metropolitan police in the early hours of the day, told he was to be deported because he had violated his visa work terms, forced to change in the presence of the police and whisked to the airport and bundled on a Pakistan-bound flight.

Meanwhile, his roommates are said to have telephoned his family in Pakistan which contacted the High Commission in London and the HC trying to trace the boy approached the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which put it in contact with the Home Office which is said to have stonewalled the query until the student was put on board.

On learning the sketchy details of the case, Dawn approached the HC which said their staff was still trying to find the details of what had exactly prompted the UK authorities to deport the student on such a flimsy charge.

An HC official said that in the meanwhile it had been successful in arranging for the student to appear in his final examination from Pakistan.

Sources who have been following the case closely speculated that perhaps the UK authorities piqued by Pakistan’s refusal to sign an MoU allowing Britain to deport any Pakistani without assigning any reason with Islamabad undertaking not to arrest and torture the deportee.

And as part of this retaliation campaign, they said, the Times published at about this time two reports, one on May 21 and the other on May 23, which amounted to media trial by association of the 10 students who are facing deportation proceedings after having being cleared of charges of being involved in plotting terrorist activities in the UK.

Since the bail applications of all the 10 students are still pending before the court, the media in the civilised world would normally avoid doing such ‘judgmental’ reports on such subjudice cases lest it is mistaken to be an attempt to influence the courts, said one of the lawyers handling their bail applications.