92-Year-Old Woman Visits Ancestral Home In Pakistan After 75 Years

At the age of 15, Reena Chibbar's family moved to India during the partition in 1947. After 75 years, and multiple attempts to receive a visa, she is finally visiting her ancestral home.

New Delhi: A 95-year-old woman, Reena Chhibar, reached her ancestral home on Saturday after 75 years. Her family moved to India in 1947, when she was 15, according to The Express Tribune. As a part of goodwill gesture, she was granted a three-month visa by the Pakistani High Commission. According to the report, she made her way through the Wagah-Attari border to see her ancestral home located in Prem Niwas in Pakistan's Rawalpindi.

She urged the governments of both countries to "work together" to ease visa restrictions to make "coming and going easy for us".

According to the report, Reena Chhibar reminisced about the multicultural, diverse community in Pindi which thrived before the partition as she made her way to the border to Rawalpindi.

"My siblings had friends who would come over to our house from various communities, including Muslims," she said, according to The Express Tribune. She also remembered that their house-help was also a diverse mix of people.

Reena said that she "could not remove her ancestral home, her neighbourhood, and the streets from her heart". She had once expressed her desire to visit her ancestral home on social media, thereafter a Pakistani citizen contacted her and shared images of the house.

Reena had applied for a visa in 1965 to visit Pakistan but she could not acquire permission amid high tensions due to the war between the two neighbours. She had also applied for a visa in 2021, but it was rejected. She once again turned to social media to express her desire to visit her ancestral home and tagged the new Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar in her post. Reena Chhibar claims Khar immediately contacted the Pakistan High Commission and she finally received her visa after 90 days.