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Leading Pakistani film and showbiz star Meera has made an urgent appeal to the British government to grant her a visa on compassionate grounds so she can travel to London to see her critically ill sister, Shaista Abbas, who is suffering from advanced-stage cancer.
Speaking from New York, Meera said her sister Shaista’s condition had deteriorated and that she urgently wanted to be by her side at what she described as an extremely difficult time for the family.
The actress has faced longstanding difficulties in obtaining permission to enter the UK, several members of her family are British nationals. Her immigration history includes previous visa refusals and a lengthy ban on entering Britain. Documents previously reported by Geo News showed that Meera had at one stage been banned from entering the UK for 10 years, some of the difficulties arose from misunderstandings during an English-language immigration interview.
Her mother, Shafqat Zahra Bukhari, previously said that confusion arose during questioning at Heathrow Airport when an immigration officer asked Meera about “transit”, while the actress apparently understood the question differently and referred to a “transaction”.
She appealed to the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and British High Commissioner to Pakistan Jane Marriott to consider her circumstances on humanitarian grounds and facilitate her case.