India demands certificate Pak won't give, Kerala mom struggles for daughters' citizenship & grandson's fragile life

Kannur: When Hamdan was born in Kannur in 2016, doctors diagnosed him with biliary atresia, a rare condition in which the liver's bile ducts are missing or blocked, preventing bile, which helps in fat digestion, from reaching the small intestine. At six months, he underwent a liver transplant.

The relief was short-lived. Within months, his portal vein, which carries blood from the intestines to the liver, clogged. A stent was placed to keep blood flowing. "After that, he began suffering frequent seizures," recalls his grandmother, Rasheeda Bano (53).

In 2020, when Hamdan was four, he underwent brain surgery to control the seizures. It failed. "Now they say his epilepsy is drug-resistant and nearly impossible to treat," Rasheeda says. Now nine, Hamdan has also been diagnosed with autism. His childhood is slipping away in hospital corridors, while the family runs on borrowed time. "We want to try treatments abroad, but…" Rasheeda says, leaving the thought hanging.

Rasheeda, who left Pakistan in 2008 with her six children, is locked in a legal battle for Indian citizenship for her two daughters, Sumaira Maroof (28) and Mariam Maroof (27). Sumaira is the mother of Hamdan, whose fragile health adds urgency to their fight. 

Their case highlights the gap between law, judicial reasoning and hidebound bureaucracy. While courts have held that the law cannot demand the impossible, Indian officials insist on a 'citizenship renunciation certificate' that Pakistan will not provide. The only document Pakistan gave was an NOC saying it had no objection to India granting citizenship to Sumaira and Mariam. This deadlock has left the two daughters stateless and Hamdan without the chance of treatment abroad.

For a moment, the judiciary gave them hope. In July 2024, the Kerala High Court directed the Union government to grant citizenship, noting the family had met every condition except one: the renunciation certificate. As Pakistan refused to give it, Justice T R Ravi asked the Union government not to treat it as a "substantive requirement".

How the system set her up to fail
Since arriving in India, the family filed at least nine writ petitions and a contempt case in the Kerala High Court, seeking protection from deportation, citizenship, and even a plea to trace a citizenship certificate issued but not delivered for six years. "Hamdan's illness already takes us on endless rounds of hospitals in Mysuru, Chennai and Bengaluru. At the same time, we are forced to run after citizenship," Rasheeda says.

In 2017, Rasheeda surrendered Sumaira and Mariam's Pakistani passports at the High Commission in Delhi and paid the renunciation fee of ₹7,600 each. Unlike India, where 18 is the minimum age to renounce citizenship, Pakistan does not allow it before 21 , a rule Rasheeda did not know. 

Sumaira was nine months short of 21, and Mariam was 19 years old then. But now, Pakistan refuses to issue the renunciation certificate or return their passports. "I've studied only up to Class 12. I was trying to secure my children's future. If the law does not allow renunciation under 21, why did the High Commission take my passports and accept the fees?" Rasheeda says, seething in anger.

She said she waited till 2017, thinking that 18 is the minimum age for renouncing citizenship. Rasheeda pleaded with the consular officials to return the passports so she could apply again. "But they said the passports had already been sent to Pakistan," she recalls.

In India, the Ministry of Home Affairs stood firm: no renunciation certificate, no citizenship. Justice T R Ravi of the High Court broke the impasse by invoking the Doctrine of Impossibility, cited several times by the Supreme Court. "The law cannot compel a person to do the impossible," he wrote in his judgment. The children were below 21 when the passports were surrendered, and they would never be able to travel to Pakistan on Pakistani passports because the passports do not exist, the judge reasoned in the order. Instead of granting citizenship, the Ministry of Home Affairs challenged the judgment.

In August 2025, the HC division bench struck down the single bench order and ruled that the renunciation certificate is mandatory under Section 14A of the Pakistan Citizenship Act. "Mere surrender of a passport does not amount to renunciation," the judges said in the order.

The human cost of this ping-pong is staggering. Rasheeda's mother, Fathima, died stateless on June 1, 2025, at 76, her last wish to perform Umrah unfulfilled. "In my mother's case, the Pakistan High Commission gave the renunciation certificate, and I submitted it to (Kannur District) Collectorate along with Form VI (citizenship application)," says Rasheeda. But the Kerala officials later told her they lost her mother's renunciation certificate.

Her father Hassankutty, diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, chose not to get entangled in the legal rigmarole. He passed away on March 26, 2024, at 86, while still living on a long-term visa.
 "I don't want that to happen again... Not with my daughters, not with Hamdan," vows Rasheeda, who raised six children by working as a tailor at Kadirur village near Thalassery. "I am going back to the Pakistan High Commission with every document I have. If they refuse again, I’ll knock on the doors of the Supreme Court."

Tripping on bureaucracy
In 2017, except for her youngest son, Ismail, all five children had crossed 18. Rasheeda surrendered their Pakistani passport, along with hers and her mother Fathima's, at the Pakistan High Commission. In 2018, she received renunciation certificates for herself, Fathima, and three children, Sadia, Afshan, and Quassim, who were all above 21. She submitted them at the Kannur Collectorate. While Fathima's document went missing, the rest were processed, and all four became Indian citizens. But Rasheeda's own citizenship certificate never reached her. "I ran around for six years and then approached the High Court in August 2024 for my citizenship certificate," she says. Two months after the court issued notice to the Home Ministry, it finally arrived.

Her fight for Sumaira and Mariam, however, is dragging on. "In 2018, when the certificate was rejected, I kept going to the High Commission. One day, I fainted there. I was running around in the biting cold without food or sympathetic ears," she recalls.

Moved by her plight, people at the High Commission urged officials to give her some documents for her to apply for citizenship. That was when the High Commission issued a No-Objection Certificate (NOC). "I was happy to get something from the High Commission," Rasheeda says. But when she applied for citizenship with the NOCs, the Ministry of Home Affairs rejected the applications, insisting on the renunciation certificate.

'No mention of renunciation certificate in law'
Apart from the 'doctrine of impossibility', Single Bench Judge T R Ravi also pointed to a precedent where the High Court Division Bench accepted the oral testimony of Chaldean Syrian Church bishop Ollukaran Thomakutty, supported by a certificate from the Syrian Embassy in Delhi, as proof that he had renounced his Syrian nationality -- even without formal documents.

But the Division bench overturned the order, accepting the Union government's stance that a renunciation certificate is mandatory and the document will ensure "legal clarity".

Rasheeda’s counsel, Adv Sasindran M, told Onmanorama that Sumaira and Mariam had given up their passports along with the renunciation fee. "It was not a mere surrender. The passports were sent to Pakistan to be registered for renunciation. That is why the passports are not being returned," he said. Also, Section 14A, he said, bars persons under 21 from renouncing Pakistani nationality but does not mention 'renunciation certificate' -- it requires only registration.

The Indian Citizenship Act also does not mention the sought-after renunciation certificate. Since their father, Maroof, was originally an Indian citizen, Sumaira and Mariam applied under Section 5(1)(f) of the Indian Citizenship Act, which requires Form VI. "The form also does not ask for a renunciation certificate; the Act itself requires only an undertaking to renounce foreign citizenship once the application for Indian citizenship is accepted," he says. Moreover, since Pakistan does not permit dual citizenship with India, an NOC is in itself an acknowledgement that Pakistan no longer regards them as its citizens, he says. Officials, however, have imposed the certificate requirement through executive orders.

The migration and the return
Two years after Independence, Rasheeda’s father, Hassankutty, left Kadirur for Karachi with his mother. In 1964, at 25, he returned to Thalassery to marry 15-year-old Fathima, but continued living in Karachi, visiting like an expatriate. After years without children, he took her back to Karachi in 1971 for fertility treatment, just before the India-Pakistan war in December. "My mother went to Pakistan to bear me but got stranded there and became a Pakistani citizen," Rasheeda recalls. Rasheeda was born in Karachi in 1972, the couple's only child.

Three years later, when Hassankutty's sister died in Thalassery, he brought her orphaned seven-year-old son, Mohammed Maroof, to Karachi.

In 1988, when Rasheeda was 16, the family married her to Maroof, then 20. By 2002, the young couple had six children. As Maroof drifted to the UAE, Rasheeda felt disconnected from Pakistan and its culture.

In 2008, after separating from her husband, Rasheeda returned to India with her parents and six children on a long-term visa, seeking citizenship. "I wanted my daughters to marry Malayalis," she says.

But the wait has become a race against time. "The delay is breaking us. Mariam’s husband had to quit his job in Qatar because he couldn’t take his wife there. He is still searching for work. And we are running out of time for Hamdan, too," she says.