Arshad Khan aka Chai Wala declared Pakistani citizen

KARACHI: Arshad Khan, the tea vendor who went international in 2016 with his striking blue eyes after being clicked as the “Chaiwala,” is now formally a Pakistani citizen, with his national identity card reinstated.

As per Arab News, Khan’s lawyer, Umer Ijaz Gilani, told the Lahore High Court on Monday that the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) had unlocked his client’s computerised national identity card.

“Today, we made the court aware that the computerized national identity card of Arshad Khan, also known as Chaiwala, has been de-blocked,” Gilani said, adding that the issue was pursued at the highest level of the government after the notice was taken by the court in April.

A NADRA verification board subsequently examined Khan’s family records, which had been decades-old documents of identification, and authenticated that he was a Pakistani citizen. Gilani informed the court that NADRA then revived his CNIC and that the court had “disposed of our constitutional petition” after the confirmation by the authority.

He said Khan’s documents had been “mistakenly blocked” in 2017 after his appearance on television when he was falsely presented as an Afghan national.

Pakistan’s deportations of Afghans have accelerated in the last year, with officials sending back over 800,000 Afghans since 2023 as part of a national crackdown on illegal foreign nationals.

The sweep has increased anxiety among families that straddle the border and are accused of having fake documents, such as Khan, whose passport and ID were revoked after the media gossip broke.

The Lahore High Court had already taken cognizance of Khan’s petition this year, requesting his blocked identity card and passport to be restored.

After NADRA verification, Khan’s citizenship was reaffirmed and he was cleared for renewing his passport and resuming international travel under his brand “Café Chaiwala,” which is thriving in Pakistan as well as the United Kingdom.

Earlier, Arshad Khan explained to BBC Urdu that his family had moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan prior to the 1970s and that he and his brothers were born in Islamabad.

In his view, his father had acquired a Pakistani national identity card in 1984 and afterwards used his passport while working in Saudi Arabia.

Arshad also said that his father had two wives. “My biological mother and stepmother are both Pakistani Pashtuns. All my maternal uncles and grandfather have Pakistani ID cards. The only one who did not get an ID card was my mother — mainly because women did not like having their photos taken for such cards back then.”