A ride on the new bus service from Azad Kashmir to the occupied valley has helped 27-year-old Ajmal Basharat meet and marry his wife, a news report said on Sunday. Basharat, dressed in a traditional long cream-coloured coat and white trouser, on Saturday married a distant cousin named Salima in Onangam village, in Indian portion of Kashmir, The Sunday Express said. Kashmir has been a disputed area between India and Pakistan for six decades, and the fortnightly bus service that began last month is seen as a key confidence-building measures towards peace between the two countries.
Basharat is no stranger to Onangam as he was born in the village. He had left for Azad Kashmir in 1990 with his grandfather, who migrated to Pakistan in 1965. His parents and most of the family stayed in occupied Kashmir.
He graduated in business management in Pakistan and took up a job with the finance ministry at Gujranwala, the newspaper said.
The family found it difficult to keep in touch with Bashara. "Letters were the only source of communication, but these became scarce. The phone calls to Pakistan were barred, so it was impossible to keep in touch with him," Basharat's father Anwar Basharat told the daily.
When peace prospects appeared to be improving a year ago, Ajmal Basharat's parents started thinking about his marriage to distant cousin Saima, a college student in Sopore, a town in the Indian occupied Kashmir.
Indian authorities helped by allowing Ajmal Basharat to stay on the Indian side for an extra 15 days. He had been originally scheduled to return to the Pakistani portion of Kashmir on May 6.
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