“The one who has left home is good as dead for me,“ Gaya Prasad Thomas, father of Anju reacted angrily to reports about her marriage with her Facebook friend Nasrullah in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, after converting to Islam and adopting the name Fatima.
Thomas, who has been reluctant to talk about the issue and often lost temper while responding to questions from the media, reiterated that he had no information or knowledge whatsoever about what was happening with Anju. He especially lost his cool when he was asked about the religious conversion of Anju and refused to comment on it.
“Let her die there,” he said, refusing to appeal to the Indian government to bring her back from Pakistan. To a question on the expiry of her visa in August, he said "I have got nothing to do, whether her visa expires or she expires."
On questions of any possible conspiracy or security concerns as Tekanpur (where Thomas lives) also houses the Border Security Forces (BSF) Academy, a sensitive establishment, Thomas said that his children were not of criminal nature and yet he was ready for any probe as everything was clean and fair on their part. “I have lived in Tekanpur for the past 42 years. No one (authorities) has asked me any such questions even in this issue. You are the one asking it; why don’t you investigate if you have doubts,” Thomas told a media person.
On the question that Anju’s uncle (Thomas’s brother) worked with BSF, Thomas said that he stayed separately from his brother, who had nothing to do with the issue.
He however said that a woman who could leave her two children, let alone her husband, to engage in such an activity, was no one to him and he did not want to keep any relationship with Anju or communicate with her. Thomas said that he was ready to take care of Anju’s children if such circumstances arose and it was about them he was worried about. Anju, who married Arvind Meena of Bhiwadi about 17-18 years ago, has two children – a daughter aged 15 years and a son aged eight years.
On Monday, Thomas termed Anju as an eccentric woman, who would sometimes hit her children, which was the reason why he did not maintain a regular communication with Anju. On Tuesday, Thomas said that Anju’s mother was in touch with her and Anju came on and off to her maternal home, especially for social occasions like marriage, but he did not speak much to her.
Thomas had told media persons that Anju was eldest of his five daughters and a son and was mainly raised by her maternal uncle’s family in Jalaun of Uttar Pradesh. She worked in a private firm in Bhiwadi, apparently as a security guard.
Thomas had said he was unaware of Anju’s Pakistan travel, but said that she might not have done it out of love for a Pakistani man. “She is of good character and nature that way,” he said. He praised his son-in-law as a ‘good simple’ man and added Arvind had called him up on Sunday night to inform the matter.
