Agartala: A woman, suspected to be a Pakistani national, was arrested by the Government Railway Police (GRP) at the Sabroom railway station in south Tripura on Saturday.
The 50-year-old woman told her interrogators that she is a resident of the Sheikhpura district in Pakistan and was trying to cross over the international border to Bangladesh. Her statements are being verified by security and intelligence agencies, officials told news agency IANS.
The woman was arrested after getting off the Kanchanjunga Express from Sealdah in Kolkata, West Bengal. GRP officials said on Sunday that she was behaving in a suspicious manner and could not produce any valid identification documents once challenged.
“The arrested woman speaks in Hindi and initially claimed that she stays in Purani Basti in Delhi. On being asked, she said that her name is Saheena Parveen. However, she could not produce any valid identity document. Several Pakistani contact numbers were found with her, concealed in sheets of paper tied around her waist,” the police told the news agency.
The woman initially claimed that she was a resident of Pakistan’s Punjab province and had entered India with the help of an agent through Bangladesh three years ago. She entered West Bengal and then travelled to Delhi where she apparently worked as a domestic help.
She also told officials that she was now trying to return to Pakistan and had been told by agents to cross over into Bangladesh first.
“On sustained interrogation, the woman admitted that her initial statements were false. She revealed her true identity as Louis Nighat Akhtar Bhano, wife of Mohammad Golaf Faraj, from Village Younganabad, Chak No. 371, District Sheikhupura, Pakistan,” an official said.
The woman revealed that she had travelled to Nepal 12 years ago with a Pakistani passport for the purpose of drug trafficking. She was arrested by Nepal Police in 2014 with one kg of brown sugar and sentenced to 15 years.
She was houses in Kathmandu Jail from where she managed to escape during September’s unrest in the Himalayan nation.
She said that she entered India about 15-16 days ago, and learnt from her associates and agent that she could return to Pakistan through Bangladesh by crossing the Indo-Bangladesh Border via West Bengal or Tripura.
“She first went to West Bengal but found no opportunity to cross the border. Following the directions of the agent, she travelled to Tripura and arrived in Sabroom by the Kanchanjunga Express.
