PESHAWAR (Parliament Times) – The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Saturday decided to request the federal government not to deport deport Sharbat Gula, the National Geographic’s iconic green-eyed ‘Afghan girl’.
Gula was sentenced to 15 days imprisonment and fined Rs110,000 by a special anti-corruption and immigration court in Peshawar on Friday for acquiring Pakistani Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) through forged papers.
She was arrested on October 26, 2016 from her home in Peshawar.
She will not be deported from Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government official Shaukat Yousafzai said.
The provincial home department has also stopped implementation of the decision to deport her.
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan had requested Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak to not deport Gula.
The decision was taken on humanitarian grounds and as a goodwill gesture towards Afghanistan.
Sharbat Gula gained worldwide recognition when her image was featured on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine at a time when she was about 12.
According to an interim chargesheet submitted on November 1, 2016, the prosecutor said that she accepted the main charge of faking her identity to get the CNIC.
Gula said that her late husband, Rehmat Gul, had earlier made a manual national identity card in 1988, which was used to get the CNIC with the help of an agent who was bribed.
The FIA also registered an FIR on October 20, 2016 against three former government employees for fraudulently issuing Pakistani CNICs to Afghan nationals, including Ms. Gula.
