UP ATS Nabs Three Rohingya Muslims Illegally Living In India; Recovers Forged Indian Identity Documents, Passports

Three Rohingya Muslims were arrested from Uttar Pradesh on Monday (1 March) for living illegally in India using forged documents besides facilitating others from Bangladesh and Myanmar to come to India.

The arrests were made by the UP Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) on the basis of inputs received from the Military Intelligence (MI) unit in Lucknow.

In 2019, officials of MI Lucknow had received inputs of a likely racket of Rohingya Muslims who illegally acquired Indian identification documents and settled down in various parts of the country. It was also suspected that these people were involved in bringing others from Myanmar and Bangladesh and helping them get low-wage jobs in various slaughter houses and beef production factories.

An investigation was undertaken by MI Lucknow. As a result, a suspect namely Hasan Ahmed (on Myanmar documents) alias Mohd Faruq (on Indian documents) was identified at a slaughterhouse in Aligarh. Subsequently, he moved from Aligarh to Unnao, then to Rajasthan and to Nuh (Haryana). In Unnao, he stayed with his younger brother Mohd Shahid who was settled there. Also, it was suspected that Hasan Ahmed alias Mohd Faruq was helped by his son-in-law Mohd Zubair in Aligarh.

The case was shared with the UP ATS in the beginning of 2021 and was further investigated jointly by the two units.

After monitoring their movements for a month or so, on the night of Sunday-Monday, separate teams of UP ATS arrested Hasan Ahmed alias Mohd Faruq, Mohd Shahid and Mohd Zubair from Noida, Unnao and Aligarh, respectively. Mobile phones, Rs 5 lakh in cash, eight passports and other forged Indian identity documents were recovered from their possession.

The three have been booked under Sections 419, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the IPC/CrPC and Sections 14 and 14 C of the Foreigners Act. They are now in police remand and efforts are being made to extract details of other foreigners they have assisted in settling in India based on such fake documents.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)