KISHANGANJ: A Pakistan-origin US national arrested in Bihar’s Kishanganj district on charges of entering the country without travel documents had been moving around the country under an assumed identity, a senior Bihar police officer said.
This is the second time that the woman, identified as Farida Malik, has been arrested on charges of travelling without travel documents. The woman, said to be in her fifties, was first arrested by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), the border-guarding force deployed on the India-Nepal border, in Uttarakhand in 2019 on similar charges and handed out a four-year jail term by the court. The Uttarakhand high court later reduced her jail term to 11 months.
She was caught again by SSB on November 1, this time at the border post in Galgalia in Bihar’s Kishanganj district.
Kishanganj superintendent of police (SP) Inamul Haque Mengnoo said Farida Malik allegedly travelled in India and Nepal on the basis of documents bearing a different name. Like when she flew down from Delhi to Bagdogra in West Bengal, the plane ticket was booked in the name of Sana Akhtar. The passport seized from the woman identifies her as Farida Malik, a resident of California in the US, he said.
The district police chief said the primary task of the investigating agencies for the moment was to ascertain the woman’s motives. “And how she continued to travel to the country even after she was caught by SSB in Uttarakhand and served imprisonment for 11 months in 2019-2020,” Mengnoo said.
The SP said the woman was deported to the US after her release from Uttarakhand jail. “The woman may have once again come to India from the US via Nepal,” he said.
But the police don’t know this for sure.
The woman, presently at Kishanganj district jail, has not been upfront about her movements or her motives, a police officer said.
