Fame ‘Afghan girl’ held

peshawar — An Afghan woman immortalised on a celebrated National Geographic magazine cover as a green-eyed 12-year-old girl was arrested on Wednesday for living in Pakistan on fraudulent identity papers.

The haunting image of Sharbat Gula, taken in a Pakistan refugee camp by photographer Steve McCurry, became the most famous cover image in the magazine’s history.

She now faces up to 14 years in jail, a Pakistani official warned.

Gula was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for fraud following a two-year-long investigation in Peshawar, the capital of restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

“FIA arrested Sharbat Gula, an Afghan woman, today for obtaining a fake ID card,” Shahid Ilyas, an official of the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra), said.

Ilyas said that FIA is also seeking three Nadra officials who were found responsible for issuing Pakistan’s national identity card to Gula, who have been at large since the fraud was detected. He said that Gula faces seven to 14 years prison time and fine between $3,000 to $5,000 if convicted by court over fraud.

Pakistani officials say that Gula 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.

Pakistan has launched a crackdown against those who have obtained fake ID cards fraudulently and launched a reverification campaign across the country.

Officials say Nadra has so far reverified 91 million ID cards and detected 60,675 cards by non nationals fraudulently.

A Nadra official told AFP that 2,473 foreigners, mostly Afghans, had voluntarily surrendered their ID cards which they obtained fraudulently.

Some 18 officials of the authority were under investigation for issuing ID cards to foreigners and eight were arrested, the official said. —