Guwahati: A 24-year-old Bangladeshi woman, who was living and working illegally in India using fake documents, was arrested at Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Guwahati on 16th June night.
According to police sources, the woman had arrived in Guwahati from Bengaluru on an Air India flight at around 7.45 pm. She had reportedly travelled to Assam to meet her boyfriend, who had earlier worked with her in Bengaluru.
The man, a resident of Assam, had returned to his home state a few months ago and did not go back to Bengaluru. Police said the woman decided to travel to Guwahati to meet him. However, her journey ended in police custody.
Officials of the Assam Police’s intelligence wing, who were on duty at the airport, became suspicious of her movements after she collected her luggage and came out of the arrival area. She was stopped and questioned. “We detained her for her suspicious movements in the airport and the truth was revealed after that”, a senior police official said.
During interrogation, the woman admitted that she was a citizen of Bangladesh. Following the initial inquiry, she was handed over to the Border Branch of Assam Police in Azara police station at around 10 pm.
Police investigations revealed that she had illegally entered India through the India-Bangladesh border in Tripura in 2024. She allegedly crossed the border with the help of a broker based in Agartala and later travelled to Bengaluru via Guwahati by train. She was reportedly working in a private company in Bengaluru.
Investigators also found that she was using a fake Aadhaar card prepared in the name of “Pooja Das”. The document carried an address from South Dinajpur district of West Bengal. Using this fake identity, she had been travelling and staying in different parts of India.
Officials of the BSF’s Guwahati Frontier also questioned the woman at the airport. During the interrogation, it was confirmed that her actual home is in Narayanganj near Dhaka in Bangladesh.
The woman told investigators that she had come to Guwahati to meet her boyfriend. Police are now trying to identify the man and find out how the two came into contact.
The arrest comes at a time when tensions continue between India’s Border Security Force (BSF) and Bangladesh’s Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) over the repatriation of Bangladeshi nationals detained in Assam.
The woman has been sent to a detention centre in Goalpara for further investigation. Police are also probing the fake document network, cross-border agents and others who may have helped her enter and stay in India illegally.
