Former chief minister Amarinder Singh’s close associate and Congress MLA Gurjit Sodhi has landed in soup for taking a Pakistani female friend on a tour of Rajasthan without a visa.
Former chief minister Amarinder Singh’s close associate and Congress MLA Gurjit Sodhi has landed in soup for taking a Pakistani female friend on a tour of Rajasthan without a visa.
Nazmi Rizvi, 54, had reportedly accompanied the MLA to Jaipur on New Year’s eve. She later visited Ajmer. Rizvi, who is from Rawalpindi, had a visa to visit only three places — Chandigarh, Agra and Delhi.
Rizvi’s Rajasthan tour came to light after a five-star hotel in Jaipur where she was staying, detected her illegal visit to the state and reported the matter to the Rajasthan CID.
The CID later issued a show-cause notice to the hotel, seeking a clarification. It has also recommended the state home department to blacklist Rizvi.
Though the column of the spouse’s name has been left blank in Rizvi’s visa, name of Syed Akbar Nawab has been mentioned in the column of father’s/husband’s name.
On December 24 last year, she was granted 30 days’ visitor’s visa to go to Delhi, Chandigarh and Agra.
The visa exempted her from reporting to the police. Under visa rules, a visitor or tourist, especially from Pakistan, is exempt from reporting to police only if he or she is granted special permission. Otherwise, the person has to mark her attendance at the nearest police station about his or her stay in India.
Sodhi, however, said the Pakistani woman had “unknowingly come to Jaipur thinking that her Indian visa was valid for the whole country.” She returned to Delhi a day after the hotel staff informed her that she had no visa for Rajasthan. “I cannot be held responsible for her ignorance or her actions,” Sodhi said.
Amarinder had landed in trouble five years ago by escorting his Pakistani friend Aroosa Alam and her family members to Ajmer without a valid visa. The then external affairs minister Natwar Singh, who is Amarinder’s brother-in-law, had then bailed him out.
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