Indian woman acquires Nepali MRP

 An Indian national is found to have acquired a Nepali passport and reached Kuwait for employment.

Eighteen-year-old Mingma Tamang, from Rhongeli in Sikkim successfully made it to Kuwait with the Machine Readable Passport ( MRP ) issued in the name of Nirumaya Pakhrin, 25, of Bara.

The Central Passport Office had issued the MRP on July 10, 2012. The matter had come to light when Mingma, who reached Kuwait via Delhi on May 30 last year, reached the Nepali Embassy for visa stamping on Wednesday.

“The passport was provided to me by an acquaintance named Yubaraj Chettri,” Minga said over the telephone call made from the embassy, expressing ignorance as to how or where they managed to obtain the police report and labour permission sticker. According to embassy officials, both the police report and the sticker on her passport were forged. According to Mingma, Yubaraj and his colleague Dawa Sherpa of Kolkatta had made all the arrangements for her flight to Kuwait . Mingma, who is currently living at the shelter in the embassy, said she realised that she was flying under someone else’ passport only upon reaching Delhi. She was made aware of her illegal status at the embassy.

Meanwhile, the embassy is preparing to correspond to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for investigation into the matter. According to an embassy official, though Mingma had a Nepali passport, the embassy is preparing to get her on a flight

back to Delhi as she is an Indian national. “The number of people entering Kuwait with fake stickers and police report via Delhi has increased of late,” the officer said, adding that around 50 percent of the 200 females living at the embassy shelter had reached Kuwait via Delhi using fake documents.

Forty-year-old Devi Bhandari of Bardiya also returned home on Friday due to similar reasons. Bhandari claimed she went to Saudi Arabia via the same route three times without any hassles. The trend of sending women illegally to Kuwait is on the rise partly due to the ‘Visa 20’ provision, under which local employers

bear visa expenses and airfare, encouraging traffickers to send young girls to the country for certain amount of commission.