The Karnataka police have arrested a 27-year-old Bangladeshi Muslim woman who was living in India for 15 years pretending to be a Hindu. The woman has been identified as one Roni Begum, who was living in the outskirts of Bengaluru. The woman was arrested on the inputs given by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO). She is reportedly from Bangladesh’s Narail district and was arrested on January 25 from her rented house in T Nethaji Nagar, T Dasarahalli, Northwest Bengaluru, according to Byadarahalli police.
According to reports, Roni Begum was living for 15 years pretending to be a Hindu woman called Payal Ghosh. She was married to a delivery executive called Nithin Kumar from Mangaluru. After the arrest of the woman, her husband has been absconding and a manhunt is on to locate him.
Roni Begum had snuck into India from Bangladesh when she was 12-years-old and had stayed on in the country. Once in India, she had also worked as a bar dancer in Mumbai to make ends meet.
It was reportedly during her stint as a bar-dancer that she had claimed she was a Bengali woman whose name was Payal Ghosh.
Roni Begum had fallen in love with Nitish Kumar and got married to him. The couple settled in Anjananagar, Bengaluru, in 2019 after their marriage. The woman worked as a tailor. During their stay in Mumbai, the couple were able to obtain a PAN card, and Nithin acquired an Aadhaar card with the assistance of a friend in Bengaluru.
It was when the woman’s father passed away that this 15-year-old charade started to unravel. For the funeral of her father, Begum had to travel to Bangladesh. She had planned to travel to Bengal and from there, travel to Dhaka. During her travel, immigration officers had gotten suspicious and confiscated her passport. During this incident in 2020, they had launched an investigation and recorded her statement but had not arrested her. It was during the ensuing investigation that it was discovered she was an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant.
While the investigation was on, however, Roni Begum had already travelled back to Bengaluru. The FRRO had informed the Bengaluru Police Commissioner that she was an illegal immigrant and a case was registered against her by the Byadarahalli police. It took the police 3 months to track her after questioning the places where the couple had worked and lived.
Sanjeev Patil, the DCP West, said an investigation is underway to track down the people who helped her get a PAN card, an Aadhar card, and a voter identification card.