Forced to leave his home in Punjab, now part of Pakistan, in 1947, 91-year-old Krishna Khanna has finally been allowed to visit his ancestral home by the Indian government.
The government also allowed his 80-year-old brother Jagdish and two others to visit their ancestral home in Pakistan’s Udhoke and Sheikhupura regions, reports The Times of India.
Khanna who runs a sports shop in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, struggled for 10 years to get a green signal from the Pakistan embassy in India.
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Khanna, who could not contain his emotions, said:
In the last decade, I made several attempts to secure a visa from the Pakistan high commission, but was refused every time. They wanted a local sponsor from Pakistan as it is a mandatory requirement to secure the document. And I had none.
Press Minister at the Pakistan High Commission, Manzoor Ali Memon, called the Pakistan government’s gesture a “positive action, purely form our heart”.