June 22, 2018
An Iranian college student says she was beaten by immigration police in India while she was trying to get her foreign student documents in order. The local police, however, say it was the Iranian who got violent.
The uproar erupted at the Foreigners’ Registration Office (FRO) inside the police commissionerate in the city of Pune June 7, when eight woman officers engaged in fisticuffs over the Iranian’s visa.
While the Iranian woman said the cops have long harassed her with demands for different documents, the police told the Pune Mirror she was guilty of repeated misbehavior and providing incomplete documentation.
Nooshin Roostaei had gone to the FRO to obtain an exit permit as her visa had expired in March last year, she said. Roostaei added that she has been going to the office repeatedly for the exit permit, but every time has faced demands for additional documents.
“They keep asking me to bring different documents ever since my visa expired. I had nowhere to live and was staying with my friend all this while. They asked me to bring his identity and address proofs, which we did, but still they always found us short of something or the other. I did not come to India just for studies, but also because I love this country, its culture and its people—until today,” said Roostaei, who has been in India for the last six years and has pursued her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology and anthropology from Fergusson College and Savitribai Phule Pune University, respectively.
On her latest visit to the police station, the officers beat her badly, she said. “They thrashed me. There were these eight women police who took me inside a room without CCTV cameras and slapped me, punched me, choked my throat and even tried breaking my arm. The intensity of the attack can be seen as one wall-mounted television came down when I tried to defend myself. They beat me for about 20 minutes and then, when they left my hand, I escaped from there. There were many foreign residents who witnessed this. The male officers were all spectators and they even mocked me by making fun of me. One even touched me wrongly,” Roostaei told the Pune Mirror. Pune is pronounced poo-na.
One of the female officers on duty blamed the violence on Roostaei. “She just scratched my hand badly and fled away. This is not the first time she has behaved in this manner in this office. She does this to avoid any action against her as she does not have complete documents,” said the injured officer.
Another Iranian student, Mehran Lahooli, who was sent by the Iranian embassy in Delhi after Roostaei complained, put the blame on Roostaei, “This is not the kind of attitude she should have. I was sent by the embassy to help her, but she is not ready to listen to me. She had promised to only talk with me inside the office as I was here to sort her case, but she has misbehaved with the cops instead and even attacked one of them.”
Pritee P Tipare, the assistant commissioner of police assigned at the FRO, told the Mirror that action would be taken against the Iranian woman.
He said, “Usually, we are lenient with foreign nationals and assist them as much as possible since they are special to us. But in this case, where this woman has been overstaying for over two years now since her visa got over in March 2016, we may take stringent action.”
He said the police had three options: “We may issue her a leave-India notice, put her on compulsion exit or we may even deport her for her behavior and she would never be able to come to India again. She has injured one of our officers also. The documents she has not submitted are police verification copy, passport copy and also the bona fide certificates from her university. How can we grant her the permission to leave,” Tipare said.
Roostaei said she was never able to get her visa renewed for two years because her university repeatedly failed to provide the required documents.
