A woman from Pakistan took the daring step of crossing borders to live with the love of her life in India in May this year.

Seema Ghulam Haider, a 27-year-old Pakistani woman set out from Karachi with her four children to Dubai, UAE and then took a connecting flight to Kathmandu, Nepal. From the capital city of Nepal, they went to Pokhara and took a bus through which they were able to cross the border to India illegally despite checks. The authorities were not suspicious of her, as a woman with four children seemed nothing to worry about. After reaching Delhi, she took a short ride to Greater Noida.

Haider and her lover Sachin, a 22-year-old grocery store worker at Rabupura in Greater Noida, have a love story which is quite out of the ordinary. Both of them connected on the popular online gaming platform PUBG, where their bond blossomed into love. This prompted Haider to risk everything and travel a long way to be with the man of her dreams.

Prior to her entering India illegally, they had met in January in Nepal and decided to live together, additional CP Sureshro Arvind Kulkarni told the Times of India (TOI). The couple and the children were secretly residing at Sachin’s rented apartment.

Both of them were caught, after a lawyer, who was approached to get them married, informed the cops about them. They were found by the police on Sunday whilst on their way to Ballabhgarh in Haryana.

“I was startled when I found that she and her children (three daughters and a son) were carrying Pakistani passports. She was making inquiries about the process of getting married in India. She said she wanted to marry Sachin,” the Bulandshahr based lawyer, who requested not to be named, told TOI on Monday, 3 July.

Reports state that both individuals have been apprehended by the local police, raising concerns about the legality of their situation. Deputy Commissioner of Police, Saad Miya Khan, confirmed the detention of the Pakistani woman, the Indian man, and the custody of the woman’s four children.

According to the lawyer and police, Haider claimed that she was a victim of domestic abuse in Pakistan. “She told me she was married to a Pakistani man who works in Saudi Arabia and he would beat her for every little thing. She said she hadn’t met him in four years. She also said her brother is with the Pakistani army,” the lawyer was quoted by TOI. However, now, the future of the couple hangs by a thread as interrogations and investigation are underway.