Bollywood is synonymous with romance but a video game love affair is definitely on another level. A Pakistani woman has proven that there is truly no barrier to love by pulling off one of the most insane cross-country stunts to be with her lover who she met through Player Unknown’s Battleground aka PUBG.
The 27-year-old Pakistani identified as Seema Ghulam Haider met her Indian lover identified as 22-year-old Sachin Meena on PUBG in 2019. Launched in 2017, the multiplayer shooter became an instant hit, amassing over $400 million in the first six months of its release.
It was so popular in India that the government tried to ban it a couple of times on the ground that students were bingeing on it to the point of losing interest in their studies. Hindustan Times reported that the two lovers spend hours on the game and eventually began to express their love to each other.
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Their love defied logic, religion, social ethics, and geography. Firstly, Haider was a married Pakistani Muslim woman with four children. On the other hand, Sachin, a Hindu man, was in India—two countries with tension-soaked and heavily fortified borders. Muslim-Hindu relationships are often termed “love jihad”—an Idea that Muslim men marry Hindu women to convert them to Islam.
According to the BBC, the love affair started when Haider’s husband, Ghulam Haider, took up a job in Saudi Arabia. Based on distance and cultural background, Haider and Meena’s relationship was simply not possible However, what began as a video game love affair found its way to reality.
From video game love affair to reality
The first time Haider had a face-to-face encounter with Meena was in March, in Nepal according to a police official report. During that encounter, Haider was not with her children. The police also dispelled the rumor that Meena might have lured Haider with false promises.
“She knew that he was not financially strong,” said Sudhir Kumar, head of the Rabupura police station. “She was not impressed by his work but by his PUBG skills.”
Two months after their first encounter, Haider started looking for a way to get to India with her children. The couple told reporters that they found a way to get Haider into India by “searching on YouTube”. Mir Jan Jhakrani, Haider’s father-in-law told reporters that the 27-year-old mother of four sold her husband’s home in Pakistan to raise money for the trip.
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However, Haider denied that allegation saying what she sold was her parent’s plot of land. She also told authorities that she was physically abused by her husband and has asked for a divorce. Haider and her four children spent over a month with Meena and his father in Greater Noida, a city located south of New Delhi.
A short-lived video game love affair
Apparently, the couple wanted to take their video game love affair to the next level and consulted an attorney for advice on Haider’s residency and marriage. Luck ran out of them on Tuesday, July 4, when the lawyer notified authorities.
Authorities arrested Haider and her four children for entering India Illegally. Meena and his father were also arrested for sheltering Haider who had no visa. Haider’s passionate plea rang out as she was taken away by the police.
“I don’t want to go back,” she said. “I want to marry Sachin. I love him a lot and left everything for him.”
Meena did not also hide his love for Haider. “We just want the government to let us marry and build a family,” he said during his arrest.
The three were initially arrested and jailed. However, an emerging report from Indian Express reveals that the three were granted bail by a local court on Saturday, July 8 on the grounds that Haider did not cross the border “with any wrong intention”. The lovers are now seeking the support of the Indian government to legitimize their union according to a BBC report.
Can you visit someone you met through video games?
Haider and Meena’s video game love affair is not a story that you easily come across every day. Although theirs is enjoying what can be considered a form of a happy ending, some people are not so lucky.
For example, the internet is crawling with stories of ladies that were murdered when they visited their Internet lovers. Online multiplayer games have made it easier for strangers to connect and immediately find common ground.
Sadly, these online multiplayer games have also become a weapon for abuse. Instances of abuse have become rife to the point that the Danish police carved out a special unit to monitor signs of hate speech, fraud, and child grooming.
As a rule of thumb and for the sake of personal security, always treat everyone you meet online as potentially harmful—until they prove otherwise. Haider’s video game love affair is a risk we would never advise any of our community members to take.
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