Peshawar: A 34-year-old Indian woman, who traveled to Pakistan and married her Facebook friend in the northwestern Upper Dir district in July, returned to India this week to bring her two children from India to Pakistan, her Pakistani husband said on Friday. 

The woman, Anju, converted to Islam and changed her name to Fatima before getting married to Nasrullah, her Pakistani Facebook friend, on July 25. The couple made headlines in both countries at the time of their wedding. 

However, Fatima this week returned to her home country via the Wagah border crossing between Pakistan and India, with her husband saying she would return to Pakistan within a few months. 

“Anju has gone to India to bring her two children to Pakistan and to face a divorce case filed by her first husband,” Nasrullah told Arab News, adding the case could not be decided in her absence. 

Fatima has a 15-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son who live in India, according her husband. 

The woman traveled to Pakistan on a one-month visa that expired in August, but she continued to live with her husband in Pakistan. The 34-year-old decided to return to India after multiple visa rejections by Pakistani authorities and to “resolve her family issues.” 

Nasrullah said he wanted the Pakistani and Indian governments to help his wife bring her children to Pakistan. 

Late last month, the couple was seen visiting historic places in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore in videos shared on social media. 

“It is my last day in Pakistan and my journey since I came here has been very good,” Fatima said in one of the videos. “Every day is spent well here.” 

She praised the Pakistani people for the respect they gave her and their hospitality. 

Following their court marriage in July, the couple had received widespread love and respect from Pakistanis, with multiple Pakistani commercial enterprises announcing generous gifts for them. 

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s consumer price index (CPI) jumped 29.2 percent in November on a year-on-year basis, the country’s statistics bureau said on Friday, with analysts attributing monthly increase in prices to a recent hike in gas tariff. 

The headline inflation was recorded at 26.8 percent in October and 23.8 percent in November last year, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). 

Prices went up by 2.7 percent in November as compared to a 1 percent increase in the month before and a rise of 0.8 percent in November 2022. 

Financial analysts say the increase in inflation figures for the month of November was “in line with the expectations” after the gas price hike. 

“The inflation for the month of November is in line with the expectations. The major impact has come from the gas tariff hike,” Samiullah Tariq, a director at the Pakistan Kuwait Investment Company, to Arab News. 

“Going forward we hope that the inflation would ease off.” 

In late October, Pakistan announced a sharp increase in the price of natural gas for most households and industries ahead of the cash-strapped country’s first review of a $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout it entered in July. 

While the government did not increase the tariff for the protected category (57 percent of the domestic consumers), it increased the fixed monthly charge from Rs10 to Rs400 for this category. 

The price of gas was set at Rs2,100/mmbtu for export process industry, Rs2,400/mmbtu for export captive industry, Rs2,200/mmbtu for non-export process industry, Rs2,500/mmbtu for non-export captive industry, and Rs3,600/mmbtu for the CNG sector. 

In November, Pakistan cleared the first review of the nine-month standby arrangement, paving the way for Islamabad to receive a second tranche of around $700 million from the lender. 

Among the food items that recorded highest increase in November prices were tomatoes (60.42 percent), potatoes (14.92 percent), tea (12.95 percent), onions (12.32 percent), dry fruits (7.91 percent), fish (7.75 percent), eggs (7.15 percent) and fresh vegetables (4.47 percent), according to the PBS. 

Non-food items whose prices recorded the highest increased included gas charges (280.55 percent), woolen readymade garments (8.16 percent), dental services (5.19 percent), transport services (5.11 percent) and solid fuel (3.52 percent).