Jalandhar, Jul 31: A Pakistani woman, travelling on board the Samjhauta Express without proper documents, was arrested in Jalandhar and was taken back to Amritsar for questioning by the government railway police (GRP) on Friday.
Fauzia, alias Chanda Khan, 27, a resident of Karachi, told police that she had come to India to pay obeisance at a 'dargah' (tomb) in Delhi and wanted to meet Bollywood actor Salman Khan.
Police arrested her on Thursday night after receiving information that Khan was travelling without a ticket, passport or a visa in the train that runs between Lahore and New Delhi.
The GRP in Amritsar registered a case under the foreigners Act and the Indian passport Act against Karachi resident Fauzia after a team from the Attari police checkpost, headed by assistant sub inspector (ASI) Daljeet Singh, brought her back from Jalandhar to Amritsar.
Intelligence officials and police questioned her in the morning at the Amritsar GRP police station. She was produced in an Amritsar court in the evening and remanded in two-day police custody for further interrogation.
A sum of Rs 771 in Pakistan currency, some medicines and prescriptions of Karachi hospital were found in her bag.
However, her managing to enter India without a visa and a passport has raised questions on the state of security, particularly in the backdrop of Monday’s Gurdaspur terror attack.
Baldev Singh Randhawa, the station house officer of the GRP in Jalandhar, said that the woman was changing her statement frequently, creating confusion. He said initially she claimed that she had come to pay obeisance at the Ajmer Sharif ‘dargah’ as she had not been blessed with a child.
She claimed that her passport was with her maternal uncle, Rashid Khan, who was travelling with her on the train. She said that he had kept her passport and visa after the immigration and Customs check at Attari station. There was no trace of her uncle when she was arrested.
Next, she said she wanted to meet Bollywood actor Salman Khan of Bajrangi Bhaijaan fame as she was a big fan. She claimed her maternal uncle, Yusuf Khan, used to work on the sets of reality TV show Big Boss, which was incidentally anchored by Salman Khan in January.
In Jalandhar, SHO Randhawa said that the woman had claimed that her husband’s name was Salman Khan but when prodded further, she changed her statement, raising suspicion that she was mentally unstable.
She was fluent in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, he said.
Randhawa said when the railway protection force (RPF), which was travelling in the train, informed that the woman was not having documents, permission was taken to stop the train at Jalandhar. She was arrested at 10 pm on Thursday from S-2 coach of the Attari-Delhi special train.
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