Pakistani family held

A Pakistani couple, their son and two daughters were arrested on Monday from a rented house in Titagarh for allegedly overstaying in India. One of the daughters has a seven-month-old girl.

According to police, the family has been living in India for 14 months and the visas of the five adult members expired last year. The five had allegedly obtained PAN cards and the couple had opened a joint savings account with the local branch of a nationalised bank by producing false residential certificates.

They were produced in the Serampore court, where father and son were remanded in police custody and the others in judicial custody.

Nawab Khan, 63, wife Shajehan, 58, son Amir, 21, and daughters Ishrat, 32, and Azra, 19, had entered India through the Wagah border in Punjab on April 14, 2011, with a month’s visa, said the police.

“Ishrat was pregnant when she entered India. She gave birth to a baby girl at the Titagarh house of Razia Sultana seven months ago,” said Tathagata Pandey, the inspector-in-charge of Serampore police station.

The Khans, residents of Rahim Shah Colony in Karachi, initially stayed at the house of a trader named Md Osman Gani on Abul Kalam Azad Road in Rishra as his guest. “There is a rule that every foreigner has to inform the intelligence branch office nearest to his place of stay. The family had informed the Serampore IB officers about their stay at Gani’s house,” said Pandey.

The police became suspicious after the Khans did not inform the IB office about their departure, as is the norm, even after a month.

“We went to Gani’s house in June 2011 and learnt the family had left a month ago. But there was no record of the Khan family leaving the country through Dum Dum airport,” said an IB official.

A cop claimed the family had destroyed all documents, including their passports and visas, but forgot to destroy Amir’s birth certificate, issued by a Karachi hospital.

Nawab allegedly told cops that he had started a money-lending business as he planned to stay on in India.