A Pakistani policeman escorts two of the illegal immigrants out of Islamabad airport on Thursday. (Reuters)

Islamabad, Oct. 19: General Musharraf, you have a problem: how to tell between an Indian Kashmiri and a “Pakistani” Kashmiri.

A planeload of illegal immigrants landed in Pakistan from Spain today, but officials found that only one of them was a Pakistani.

According to Reuters, the rest were from the Indian side of Kashmir.

Pakistan’s embassy in Spain issued “emergency passports” to 42 illegal immigrants but informed immigration officials in Pakistan that it was unsure about their nationalities.

The officials cannot be blamed, though.

The Line of Control may have been drawn to divide people from the two Kashmirs, but there’s little else to tell them apart. They wear the same kind of clothes, practise the same religion, eat the same food and speak the same language.

“To the surprise of our staff, there was only one Pakistani among them,” said Tariq Pervez, head of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which deals with immigration.

“We are interrogating them and will send the non-Pakistanis back to Spain,” he said. “It will take us a couple of days to conclude the verification process.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, however, Pervez denied the Reuters report that most of the passengers were from Indian Kashmir.

He stressed that they all looked like South Asians and claimed to be Pakistanis. “But it is premature to say how many of them are Pakistanis at all.”

FIA officials later shifted all the 42 immigrants to the agency’s passport cell in Rawalpindi for questioning.