‘Nabbed’ Assam woman arrested in Bangladesh

A 21-year-old woman from Assam’s Karimganj has been arrested by Bangladesh police on charges of entering the country illegally after she eloped to marry her lover from the neighbouring country, officials said on Wednesday.

Karimganj police chief Gaurav Upadhyay said Mousumi Das was arrested by the authorities on Tuesday night.

Her parents had lodged a kidnapping case with the Karimganj police after their daughter went missing on March 12.

A fortnight later a video surfaced on social media platforms showing her in a burqa inside a police station in Dhaka— Bangladesh’s capital. In another video, she claimed she had not been kidnapped but had eloped with Numan ‘Jafar’ Badshah, a saree salesman from Bangladesh she met at a trade fair in Karimganj, according to officials.

Surveillance shows Das and Badshah entered Bangladesh on March 13, a day after her disappearance, through the Akhaura border in Tripura. She reached Dhaka where, officials say she converted, changed her name to Fatima Jannat and got married.

The videos alerted the Karimganj Police who got in touch with the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in a bid to trace the woman. The MEA took it up with the Indian high commission in Bangladesh.

“Investigation has revealed that Mousumi had fallen in love with the boy after visiting the trade exhibition where Naman had come to sell sarees. Within days they decided to elope and marry,” Upadhyay said.

According to sources, two likely scenarios might happen. First, she might be sentenced to prison in Bangladesh for entering without a valid visa, passport and other documents and sent back to India after serving her term.

The second is of New Delhi and Dhaka settling the matter without the woman getting imprisoned and being ‘pushed back’ to India soon.

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