The curious case of Iraqi nationals with Iranian passports

Bhubaneshwar, Jan 28: The Odisha and Andhra Pradesh police are in touch with the Iranian embassy to ascertain details of the five persons nabbed with Iranian passports. An alert had been sounded after these five persons including one woman had gone missing form Odisha three days back.

While they had said that they were Iraqi nationals, upon their arrest, Iranian passports were seized from them. There is still no clarity on what exactly these persons were doing in India and questioning them has yielded very contradictory responses. These five persons had slipped out of Odisha and were apprehended by the Vizag police in a late night operation.

Why were they concealing their identity

While the police have only labelled them as suspects as of now, investigations are on to find out why these persons concealed their identity. The group of five persons comprised three in the age group of 23, a man and a woman in the age group of 50.

When these persons had tried to check into a hotel at Odisha, they had told the manager that they were from Iraq. However when the manager alerted the police, they slipped out of the state.

Upon their arrest, they have told the police that they were only touring the country. They also said at first that they were related to each other, but their passport verification suggests the opposite. The Iran embassy has been contacted for further details.

R P Thakur, the additional director general of police, Andhra Pradesh informed OneIndia that investigations are on. We have not found any explosives on them. On being arrested they had first claimed that they were coming from Hyderabad. However on verification it was found that they had driven in from Odisha, the officer also said.

The police are also in touch with the travel agent in Delhi from where they rented the car bearing the number DL4C 9645. The police say that their statements are very contradictory. They are not able to clearly tell us why they fled from Odisha when asked for identification.

We suspect that they may have come in from Bangladesh with fake passports, an officer associated with the probe informed.

OneIndia News