Iranian lovebirds held at Kolkata airport with forged passports

Kolkata: Their love knew no age, religion or social sanction. Fuelled by the hope of a better future, they fled from the oppression back home in Iran — only to end up in a jail in Kolkata.
Mahbooba Alipour (35), a widow, fell in love with Masood Suleimani (28), who is seven years younger than her. Both hail from Zisha in Tehran. But in Iran, such love and a subsequent marriage means capital punishment. The two were on the way to seek political asylum in Sweden when they got caught in Kolkata for travelling on false documents.
Immigration officials interrogated the duo and Mahbooba's two children, Mariam (15) and Marin (6), for 10 hours before handing them over to police, who arrested them on Wednesday. All four were carrying forged Lithuanian passports and fake documents. They were produced in Barrackpore court during the day and sent to 10 days' jail custody. Mahbooba, Masood and the two children reached India in December 2009 via Mumbai airport and went to Goa. There they met Alex, a local tout, who provided them with the forged passports for $3,000 each.
"They took the fake names Devidenko, Elica Zeltius, Imanta and Nicolas in their Lithuanian passports. This prevented the immigration officers in Mumbai from confirming their original identity," said an immigration officer.
The four flew from Kolkata on April 9 on a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok. But immigration officials at Bangkok airport suspected they were carrying forged documents and deported them to Kolkata on April 11. After returning on Saturday evening, they stayed back at the airport till Sunday. Late that evening, a senior immigration official took them to a hotel on Mirza Ghalib Street. On Tuesday afternoon, the four were once again taken back to the airport, interrogated through the night and handed over to NSCBI airport police station on Wednesday morning.
15/04/10 Arpit Basu/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Apr 2010, Foreign Apr 2010