“She wasn’t impressed with his work, but with his PUBG skills,” police said

• A Pakistani woman took her four children and made a perilous journey to India to be with her lover.

• The woman met the man through the hit video game PUBG, NYT reported.

• The woman was arrested on charges of entering India illegally, and the man for harboring her.

A woman made a risky journey to India with her four children to be with a man she met through a popular battle royale game known as PUBG.

In about a month, their cross-border love landed them in jail for a short time, The New York Times reported.

The woman, Seema Ghulam Haider, 27, met Sachin Meena, 22, at PUBG: Battlegrounds in 2019.

PUBG is a multiplayer shooter that became an instant hit when the game launched in 2017 and made $400 million within six months of its release. India tried to ban PUBG a few times, believing that students lost interest in their studies because the game was too addictive.

According to the Hindustan Times, a Delhi-based newspaper, Haider said the two would “play for hours … and never stop talking”. They soon expressed their love for each other, but their romance came with complications.

First, Haider is married. Her relationship with Meena began around the time her husband, Ghulam Haider, moved to Saudi Arabia for a job, according to the BBC.

Their distance and cultural background probably posed bigger barriers: Haider is a Pakistani Muslim woman, while Meena is a Hindu-Indian man, the Times reported.

Pakistan and India fought several wars after the partition of British India in 1947. Decades later, tensions have barely simmered.

There is also an ongoing stigma against interfaith relations between a Hindu and a Muslim.

In Pakistan, Hindu marriages were not legally legitimized until 2017. Relationships between Muslims and Hindus in India are often labeled as a “love jihad” – an idea held by hardline Hindu conservatives that Muslim men seek out Hindu women to force them to convert to them. Islam.

Still, the pair persevered. Haider first met Meena in person in Nepal in March without her children, the Times reported, citing police officials.

Story continues

According to the Times, police said Meena had not lured Haider with false promises.

“She knew he was not very strong financially,” said Sudhir Kumar, head of the Rabupura police station, according to the Times. “She wasn’t impressed with his work, but with his PUBG skills.”

In May, Haider planned to go to India with her children, who are all under seven years old, by going to Nepal first. The pair later told reporters they came up with a route by “searching YouTube,” according to the Times.

Haider’s father-in-law, Mir Jan Jhakrani, told the Times that Haider sold her and her husband’s house in Pakistan without her partner’s knowledge to make the trip.

Haider denied the allegations and told authorities she sold some of her parents’ land, the BBC reported. She also told authorities that her husband had beaten her and she had filed for divorce.

According to the BBC, Haider and her four children lived with Meena and his father in Greater Noida, a town south of New Delhi, for more than a month.

The couple was caught on Tuesday after a lawyer notified authorities, the Times of India reported. The two asked the lawyer for advice about Haider’s stay and marriage.

Haider and her four children were arrested on charges of illegal entry into the country. Meena and his father were arrested on charges of harboring Haider without a visa.

A local court granted bail to the three individuals who were released on Saturday, stating that the woman had not crossed the border “with any wrong intent”, according to Indian Express.

The couple is now seeking help from the Indian government to get married, the BBC reported.

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