Rohingya woman, 3 daughters held for living illegally in India for 17 years

BAREILLY: A 45-year-old woman of Rohingya origin, who had entered India via Bangladesh along with her three daughters and a brother without any valid documents 17 years ago and then got married to an Indian national and settled in UP, was arrested in Moradabad on Monday.

Police said the woman, Fatima Begum, had met one Nisar Khan in Meerut and they got married. Nisar, a daily-wager, managed to arrange all the "documents" for Fatima and her daughters Arshi (18), Gulshan (20) and Rehana (22) from an earlier marriage.

Her brother left India after a while and she started looking for work in Meerut. Fatima and Nisar had two children from their marriage and they shifted to Kathgarh area in Moradabad about seven months ago, police added.

SSP, Moradabad, Hemraj Meena, said, “Following information about illegal migrants in Moradabad, our local intelligence unit team, along with Kathgarh SHO Rajesh Kumar Singh, initiated an investigation and found four persons without valid visas. One of them had assisted the woman and her three daughters in availing IDs with Meerut address."

The SSP added: "We've now registered a case under IPC sections of forgery, Passports Act and the Foreigners Act against all five of them and sent them to jail. We also found that they were frequently changing their address to avoid detection.”