Jagriti Rai ( intern journalist), A 22-year-old woman who arrived on a Dubai – Pune flight on Thursday had allegedly traveled to the gulf nation just days ago using a fake name and a forged Aadhar card the Pune police said Saturday. The Visakhapatnam resident, Damu Sitaratnam was arrested shortly after landing in Pune

It was the unusually short duration of the trip – she had left on November 29 – that piqued the curiosity of immigration officers at the Pune airport. Getting no satisfactory reply to their queries, the officers searched her baggage and discovered an Aadhar card bearing the name of Dasari Swapna, following which they handed her over to the police.

The law enforcement officers, however, are having a tough time communicating with the woman – Sitaratnam is a Telugu speaker and knows very little English or Hindi. But, accordingly, to what they have been able to discern so far, she had travelled to Dubai to look for work as a house help and returned on a Vande Bharat flight after failing to find a job. Sitaratnam allegedly told the police that she had got a forged adhhaar card bearing the fake name because she feared that her passport application would be rejected on account of some criminal offences registered against her back home.

Ganjanan Pawar, senior police inspector, airport – Police station , said Sitaratnam had obtained a passport with the fake name in march from the regional passport office with the help of a man , she identified as Surya . She is said to have claimed that this same man who also supplied her with the forged Aadhar card.

‘She left for Dubai on November 29 from Delhi airport, she came back to India via the Dubai – Pune flight being run under Vande Bharat mission. Immigration officers at the airport trip and probed her further. After not getting satisfactory answers, they checked her baggage and found an Aadhar card which had her picture but a name different than the one borne by the passport they detained her and handed over the case to us ‘ Said Pawar

Sitaratnam has been produced here at a local court which remanded her in police custody till August 8. The investigating officer argued that the police needed to interrogate her to find out more about the associate, Surya, and to probe if there was a larger ring to create passports using forged documents.

We are trying to find more about the case , but owing to the language difficulty , we haven’t yet determined all the facts from the arrested girl said Pawar

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