Prashant Dayal/TNN

Ahmedabad, May 29: The Gujarat government does not want visitors from Pakistan any more. Citing security concerns, the state government has written to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs that visas should not be granted to Pakistani nationals if they express the wish to visit Gujarat.

This move comes in the wake of a spurt in arrests of Pakistanis staying illegally in border districts. All the suspects had visas to visit Delhi. They had tampered with the papers to include Kutch and Banaskantha.

Sources say Gujarat is the first state to seek a complete ban on Pakistani visitors. In the last one month, nearly 30 Pakistanis have been caught staying illegally in border districts of Gujarat and adjoining Rajasthan. The letter sent by the home department has also cited the recovery of three SIM-cards and two mobile phones from a suspected Pakistani terrorist — Shahnawaz Bhatti — in Sabarmati central jail earlier this month.

Bhatti's call records prove that he was making regular calls to Lashkar-e-Taiba contacts in Pakistan. Intelligence Bureau, which intercepted the calls, alerted Gujarat police that LeT was planning a jail break to free Bhatti, who was caught in 2001 with RDX and automatic weapons, and four other Pakistanis lodged in the jail. After the raid in Sabarmati jail, the police scoured the Kutch and Banaskantha districts and caught five Pakistanis with tampered visas, said a senior police official. Just prior to this, the Rajasthan police caught 23 Pakistanis from Barmer.

Following these arrests, the intelligence wing of state police submitted a report to the Gujarat government seeking to block all Pakistanis from coming to Gujarat. "Given the threat perception, we can't let Pakistanis stay illegally," a senior home department official said.