B’luru: Bangladeshi woman arrested for ‘illegally’ staying in India

Bengaluru: Police have arrested a 27-year-old Bangladeshi woman for illegally staying in India for 15 years by falsifying documents.

The accused, Roni Begum, aka Payal Ghose aka MST Roni was nabbed from her rented house in T Nethaji Nagar, T Dasarahalli, Northwest Bengaluru, on January 25, police said.

She allegedly got an election voters card, Aadhar card, and a passport by providing the house rent agreement, police said.

As per Byadarahalli police, immigration officials had detained her at Kolkata airport while trying to fly to Dhaka in July 2020. After noting her Bengaluru address she was let go but wasn’t allowed to take the flight. Later, based on the scrutiny of her travel documents the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Kolkata asked officials in Bengaluru to take action against the suspect woman.

In November 2020, when the police went to find her at the address given by immigration officials, it was found that she had moved away. It took the police 3 months to trace her whereabouts.

The investigation revealed that Roni, who worked at a dance bar in Mumbai, had married her lover named Nithin Kumar, a native of Mangaluru in 2015. The couple lived in different cities in Maharashtra and Karnataka before finally settling in Bengaluru.

Her husband Nitin is absconding and a search has been launched to trace his whereabouts.

Meanwhile, police are investigating as to how she got the Indian identity documents and to find how and when she came to India.