Rohingya refugee, four others arrested in Bandarban

A Rohingya woman refugee from Myanmar and her four Bangladeshi accomplices were arrested on Tuesday as she attempted to obtain Bangladeshi passport from passport office in Bandarban. 

The arrested refugee woman is Rajia Begum alias Saika, 18, a resident of Palongkhali refugee camp in Ukhiya of Cox’s Bazar, said Bandarban police.

Two of the arrestees -- Sayed Hossain, 57, and Elom Katun, 46, from Jamchhari area of Bandarban’s Naikhongchhari upazila -- were pretending to be Rajia’s parents.

The fourth arrestee, Mohammad Zakaria, 56, is also from the same area.

The fifth arrestee, Abdul Malek, a village police in Naikhongchhari Sadar union, was mediating with passport office employees for Rajia’s passport.

Naikhongchhari Police Station Officer-in-Charge Anwar Hossain said Sayed, Elom and Zakaria came to Bangladesh from Myanmar’s Maungdaw area seven to eight years ago and they obtained citizenship documents of Bangladesh by “managing” local public representatives.

Farid Uddin Ahmed, assistant director of Bandarban passport office, said, “Naikhongchhari Upazila Chairman Mohammad Shafiullah and Naikhongchhari Sadar Union Parishad [UP] Chairman Taslim Iqbal Chowdhury, whose families had come from Myanmar, have been influencing us to issue passports to Rohingyas.”

“[UP Chairman] Taslim issued a birth certificate for Rajia, but we handed her over to police when we detected her real identity,” Farid also said.

Contacted, UP Chairman Taslim admitted that he had issued birth certificate to Rajia. “I was misguided and I issued Rajia’s birth certificate,” he said.

Upazila Chairman Shafiullah, however, refuted the allegation made by the passport official.