Bangla woman arrested for ‘illegally’ staying in India for 15 years

A 27-year-old woman from Bangladesh has been arrested for illegally staying in India for over 15 years, police said.

Roni Begum, aka Payal Ghose aka MST Roni, from Bangladesh’s Narail district, was arrested on January 25 from her rented house in T Nethaji Nagar, T Dasarahalli, Northwest Bengaluru, according to Byadarahalli police.

Police said Roni was first detained by immigration officials at the Kolkata airport in July 2020 when she tried to fly to Dhaka.

Scrutiny of her travel documents led immigration officials to question her and disallow her from taking the flight. They recorded her statement in which she gave a Bengaluru address but didn’t arrest her.

Later, the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Kolkata wrote to its counterpart in Bengaluru and asked for taking action named against Roni.

In November 2020, Byadarahalli police booked her for being an illegal immigrant but couldn’t trace her because she was no longer living in the house whose address she had given to the immigration officials.

Over the next three months, Byadarahalli police inspector Ravi Kumar and his team made serious efforts to trace her.

Police learnt that Roni had worked at a dance bar in Mumbai for almost five years before marrying her lover, a Mangaluru native named Nithin Kumar. The couple lived in different cities of Maharashtra and Karnataka before moving to Bengaluru.

Police visited many of these places and inquired about her, which eventually helped them trace her current place of address in Bengaluru. Police have found that she got an Aadhaar card by providing the house rent agreement.

Police said that they were trying to find out how and when she came to India, and who helped her find work and get Indian identity documents.

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