TOSSED by the river’s swollen waters, Shehnaz Parveen had just one thought: “I said to the river: ‘Please kill me, let me die.’ ”

Hours before, the young bride had fled the home of her in-laws in Pakistani Kashmir, her face stinging from blows delivered by her husband of three months.

Married life had proved a disaster, with endless abuse from her husband and his family about her inability to conceive a child. Sobbing, she arrived at the river and threw herself in. But she did not drown. As the current swept her downstream, three men on the far bank spotted her and waded in to drag her out.

Despite her distress, she noticed that they were wearing unfamiliar uniforms. The current had carried her across the invisible line dividing disputed Kashmir between Pakistan and India.

Many times over the next seven years, Shehnaz had reason to wish she had drowned that day. Time and again, she fell victim to the enmity between India and Pakistan. Hers is the human face of that sad and dangerous conflict.

At first, Shehnaz did not realise that her rescuers were Indian soldiers. The only thing that she noticed was their guns. “I begged them to shoot me because I had failed to kill myself,” she said. “Then they asked me what a Pakistani was doing on Indian soil.” She convinced the authorities that she was not a spy, but was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for entering India illegally. One morning a male guard, Mohammed Din, entered her cell and raped her.

“I tried to resist, but I was too afraid to scream,” she recalls. “Then I realised no one would help me because I was a Pakistani and an enemy.”

A month later she found that she was pregnant. Her first thought was that she would never be accepted back into Pakistani society as the mother of an illegitimate child.

Eight months later, as she was being driven to court to give evidence against Din, she went into labour. The birth was hard and it was not until three days later that she first saw her daughter. That moment transformed her life.

“My in-laws had succeeded in making me believe I was infertile,” she said. “But here, out of the saddest moment in my life, came the happiest thing I could possess.” She named the child Mobin after a character from the Koran.

By that time Shehnaz had served her sentence, and the Indian authorities tried to deport her. But Pakistan refused to accept Mobin, arguing that she was an Indian citizen.

Under Indian law, however, she was not. Mobin’s paternity had never been legally proved, so technically she had no nationality. Mother and daughter were returned to jail under the Enemies Ordinance Act, whereby illegal entrants from enemy countries must be interned in the interests of public safety.

Shehnaz’s next chance of freedom came on the eve of the India-Pakistan summit in July last year. The two countries agreed to exchange six prisoners each as a gesture of goodwill and Shehnaz and Mobin were among those chosen. Shehnaz dressed her daughter in her best clothes and set off for the border. But when they arrived, the Pakistani Rangers once again refused to take the child. As the other prisoners crossed over, mother and daughter returned to jail.

By this time, their case had attracted the attention of A. K. Sawhney, an Indian civil rights lawyer. He brought a public interest case questioning Mobin’s detention. The case came to court last July. In a landmark judgment, the court awarded Mobin Indian citizenship and ordered that her mother be allowed to stay in India. Mobin was also awarded 300,000 rupees (£4,000) in compensation for her illegal detention, a vast sum by Indian standards. On August 2, Shehnaz and Mobin were freed.

Four months later, they are still awaiting the compensation and are due back in court to force the state government to pay up. Until that happens, they are living with the Sawhney family in a cramped flat above his practice.

“I would not have survived those years in prison if it hadn’t been for Mobin,” Shehnaz said. “She gave me hope.” She is even willing to marry Din to give her daughter a name, but he continues to deny raping her and the case against him is still proceeding.

Shehnaz is uncertain whether she will ever be able return to Pakistan. Her husband wants nothing to do with her, and their long separation means that the marriage has been legally dissolved. Letters from her own family dried up about a year ago.

Shehnaz is suffering from political, as well as cultural, forces far beyond her control. She will live in limbo until her native and adopted countries learn to co-exist.

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