LAHORE, Dec 23: Police on Friday gave a one-day deadline to madressahs for the expulsion of all foreign students. However, the madressahs did not take the deadline seriously and claimed that they had already repatriated the foreign students.

There is a deadlock on this issue, a Punjab government official said.

The action has been initiated on orders from the ministry of interior, which had sent a letter to the Punjab government, wanting it to expel and repatriate all foreign students from the seminaries, the official added.

“We are acting according to law. We have got the orders to expel the students. Any further action would be taken as required by the law and the government,” Lahore Operations police chief Aamir Zulfikar Khan told Dawn. He, however, did not say whether a crackdown on foreign students was in the offing.

The official said the interior ministry letter had attached a list of 206 foreign students studying in different madressahs of Lahore. It stated that the students belonged to Egypt, Nepal, Britain and South Africa. It added that most of the foreign students were studying in the Jamia Ashrafia on Ferozpur Road and Jamia Al-Arabia in Raiwind.

“The foreigners studying in seminaries be repatriated to their countries on earliest available flights,” the letter said.

Maulana Obaidullah of the Jamia Ashrafia said all foreigners had already been expelled, and sent to their countries. “We do not have any foreign student with us anymore,” he said by phone.