31 foreigners sans valid documents held in city

Plainclothes police in separate drives arrested a total of 31 foreign nationals staying in the country without any valid documents from various parts of the city Friday, police said.

The nationals of 10 African countries were arrested from different houses at Rampura, Gulshan, Banasree and Uttara on the charge of undocumented immigration, Deputy Commissioner of Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Krisna Pado Roy said.

At a post-arrest press briefing at the DMP Media Cell, he said they launched the crackdown on foreigners staying illegally in Bangladesh following reports about involvement of some of them in criminal activities like killing, cheating and drug trading.

"We request all the house owners in the city to remain cautious before renting out their houses to the foreigners, who normally come here on tourist and student visas," he said adding that two passports, which expired, were also recovered from two Gambian citizens.  

Among the arrestees, 12 people are from Nigeria, 5 from Uganda, 4 from Cameroon, 3 from Gambia, 2 from Ivory Coast and one each from Senegal, Kenya, Togo, Mali and Mozambique.

The move comes about two weeks after O' Level student Zubair Ahmed was murdered in the capital's Uttara, allegedly by an Algerian national.

Around 0.10 million (one lakh) foreigners, mostly from African and South East Asian nations, have been living in the country illegally for years. Of them, some African and Thai nationals are involved in crimes, according to sources in intelligence agencies.

A Nigerian national was arrested along with 450 grams of cocaine in May, 2012 while two nationals from South Africa and Cameroon were detained by the detectives with fake currency notes and currency-making materials in February, 2013.

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