The Government Railway Police (GRP) have arrested two Ukrainian nationals at Badarpur in Assam’s Karimganj district for travelling without valid papers, officials said on Friday.
The GRP personnel detained Trishchynskyi Volodymyr, 39, and Nazarii Vozniuk, 21, while they were travelling on the Agartala-New Delhi (Anand Vihar) Tripura Sundari Express train on Thursday night.
Investigation conducted by the GRP revealed that they were among the six Ukrainians arrested in Bangladesh for an ATM fraud in June 2019 and were presently out on bail.
Badarpur government railway police station’s officer-in-charge Abhishek Bodo told The Telegraph that the Ukrainians were intercepted on April 21 and brought to the Badarpur GRPS for travelling without passport and visa on the Tripura Sundari Express.
The GRP contacted the Ukraine embassy on Friday but it could not substantiate the claim made by them.
Ukraine has been in the news for the invasion of the country by Russia on February 24.
“We arrested them on Friday after we did not get any record from the Ukraine embassy. They were all along maintaining that their papers were lost a week back in Tripura. During our probe we also got to know they were arrested in Bangladesh in an ATM fraud case. They got bail in March after two years seven months in jail,” Bodo told The Telegraph.
The railway police official also said he got in touch with the duo’s advocate in Bangladesh. “He confirmed their arrest. After we confronted the duo with all the facts they broke down and started talking,” he said, sharing online reports of their arrest in Bangladesh in the alleged fraud case.
The duo reportedly entered Tripura From Bangladesh on April 20 through Akhaura with the help of a contact in Bangladesh and spent the night in a nearby village with the help of contact in Tripura.
They reached the Agartala railway station, around 5km from the border, in an e-rickshaw and boarded the train to Delhi to reach the Ukraine embassy before their trip was cut short in Badarpur, which is about 221km from Agartala by train.
They were produced before the Karimganj chief judicial magistrate on Friday, who sent them to custody of the Badarpur government railway police for seven days.
They have been booked under IPC sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging war against State/India), 121A (conspiring to commit certain offences against the State) Section 14 of Foreigners Act (overtaying visa period) and Section 12(1)(c) of the Passport Act which deals with failure to produce passport or any other travel document.
“As I see it, they will have to return to Bangladesh since they have violated their bail condition,” Bodo said.
