Nadra official remanded to FIA custody for issuing fake ID to Sharbat Gula

Two assistant directors of Nadra booked in the case are still at large

PESHAWAR: A court in Peshawar remanded on Friday an official of National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), for his alleged involvement in issuing a fake Pakistani identity card to Afghan woman Sharbat Gula.

Assistant Director Nadra, Emad, after being produced in court was handed over by the judicial magistrate to the agency on a three-day physical remand.



Prior to being produced in court, the FIA arrested the official booked in connection with the issuance of the document. The case is registered against as many as three officials of Nadra, with two assistant directors including a woman being still at large.

Sharbat Gula was deported by Pakistani officials early Wednesday to her war-torn homeland following a brief period of detention for residing in the country with fraudulent identity papers. Gula strongly denied all charges against her.

Gula, whose blazing green eyes were captured in an image taken in a Pakistan refugee camp in the 1980s that became National Geographic magazine’s most famous cover, was discharged from hospital where she was being treated for Hepatitis C and taken to the border overnight, officials said.



Gula said she first arrived in Pakistan an orphan, some four or five years after the Soviet invasion of 1979, one of millions of Afghans who have sought refuge over the border since.

Since July hundreds of thousands have returned to Afghanistan in a desperate exodus amid fears of a crackdown, ahead of a March 2017 deadline for the final return of all Afghan refugees.

Last month UNHCR said more than 350,000 Afghan refugees — documented and undocumented — had returned from Pakistan so far in 2016, adding it expects a further 450,000 to do so by the year’s end.