‘Don’t fall in love on Facebook’

An Indian man released this week after being jailed for six years in Pakistan issued advice yesterday not to follow his example and fall in love on Facebook. Hamid Nehal Ansari illegally entered Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2012 to meet a woman he had fallen for on the social media network.

But Pakistani police were waiting for him at the woman’s house and arrested him on the spot. The engineer was later jailed for spying and forging documents. “Do not be emotional about strangers and don’t fall in love on social media including Facebook,” Ansari said three days after being released and returning to India. Local media showed Ansari hugging his mother and bowing to touch his head to the ground after crossing over to India at an overland border on Tuesday.

“Getting deported was the happiest moment of my life,” the 33-year-old later said by phone from his home in Mumbai. “(Now I will) start a business, get married and work on building back my life. No more social for me,” Ansari said. Arch-rivals Pakistan and India have fought three major wars since independence from Britain in 1947. They routinely arrest each other’s citizens on spying charges.