Nat Geo’s green-eyed ‘Afghan girl’ arrested in Pak for forged papers
Pakistani authorities on Wednesday arrested famous green-eyed “Afghan girl” from her home in Peshawar for possessing a fake Pakistani Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC).
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) raided the house and arrested Sharbat Gula, officials said.
The haunting image of the then 12-year-old Sharbat Gula, taken in a refugee camp by photographer Steve McCurry in 1985, became the most famous cover image in the National Geographic magazine’s history.
She now faces seven to 14 years prison time and fine between $3,000 to $5,000 if convicted by court over fraud, a National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) official said.
FIA is also seeking three NADRA officials who were found responsible for issuing CNIC to Gula.
She had applied for a Pakistani identity card in Peshawar in April 2014, using the name Sharbat Bibi. She was one of thousands of Afghan refugees who managed to dodge Pakistan’s computerised system and to get an identity card. The authorities have launched a crackdown against those who have obtained fake Identity Cards fraudulently and launched a re-verification campaign across Pakistan.
Officials say NADRA has so far re-verified 91 million ID cards and detected 60,675 cards by non nationals fraudulently.
Some 18 officials of the authority were under investigation for issuing ID cards to foreigners and eight were arrested, the official said.
More than 350,000 Afghan refugees have returned to their war-torn homeland from Pakistan this year, UN data shows, with the torrent of people crossing the border expected to continue. Pakistan has for decades provided safe haven for millions of Afghans who fled their country after the Soviet invasion of 1979.
The original image of Gula was taken in 1984 in a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
McCurry later tracked her down, after a 17-year search, to a remote Afghan village in 2002 where she was married to a baker and the mother of three daughters.
Pakistan hosts 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, according to UNHCR figures from earlier this year.