Mumbai: Bangladeshi Woman Arrested at Mumbai Airport for Passport Fraud and Multiple Identity Use

A Bangladeshi woman, identified as Shabikun Nahar Ruchi, was arrested at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport while attempting to travel to Dhaka. Immigration officers detained her and handed her over to Sahar Police for further investigation. It was revealed that she had renewed her Indian passport three times using two different names and had traveled to Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and other countries on the same document. Currently, she is in police custody and is being interrogated.

According to police sources, Nilesh Yadavrao Deshmukh, a sub-inspector from Mumbai Police's Special Branch 2, was on duty at the international airport on Tuesday morning. During routine checks, he apprehended a woman traveling to Dhaka. She was carrying an Indian passport with a Bangladeshi visa and had records of traveling to Bangladesh twice. Upon questioning, she failed to provide satisfactory answers, leading to a deeper investigation. Eventually, she confessed to being a Bangladeshi citizen.

Further inquiries revealed that she had migrated to India with her parents and initially lived in Kolkata before settling in Malegaon, Nashik. After her marriage in 2006, she moved to Mumbai. During this time, she managed to obtain an Indian passport under the name "Shubikun Nahar Abu Ahmed" from Bhubaneswar. Using this passport, she traveled to Saudi Arabia for work and later renewed it in 2021. Post-marriage, she secured another passport under the name "Sabina Humayun Kabir Khandekar."

A forensic examination of her mobile phone led investigators to documents proving her Bangladeshi nationality. It was also discovered that she had been residing in India illegally for the past 20 years. During this period, she renewed her passport three times under different names and frequently traveled to Bangladesh and other countries.

Following these revelations, Sahar Police took her into custody and registered a case based on Sub-Inspector Nilesh Deshmukh’s complaint. She was arrested on Wednesday and later presented in court, which remanded her to police custody for further investigation.