Two Pak 'spies' remanded to police custody for 14 days

Two Pakistani nationals, including a 38-year-old woman, arrested by the city police on the charge of entering India without any authorisation with an intention to settle here as the Inter-Services Intelligence modules, were remanded by a Delhi court in police custody for 14 days.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav remanded 40-year-old Imran and his woman accomplice Soofia Kanwal, both from Karachi, in police custody in an in-camera proceeding.

The court handed over the duo to police on the prosecution's plea that their custodial interrogation was required to unravel their networks and plans here, said a police official, privy to the in-camera court proceedings.

The crime branch of the city police arrested the duo from New Delhi railway station on a tip off that two Pakistani nationals, who had entered India on December 5 through Sanouli border in Gorakhpur of Uttar Pradesh, would be coming to the national capital by the Gorakhdham Express.

The police had earlier said Imran had confessed to it during his interrogation that he originally belonged to Ahmedabad but migrated to Pakistan in 1988 and since then had been settled there and acquired Pakistan's citizenship. He had floated his own textile company in Pakistan but in 2007-08, incurred huge losses and was in deep financial crisis when Pakistani intelligence agencies approached him with the offer of monetary support if he worked for them.

The police said Imran has confessed to it that the Pakistani intelligence agencies had in March 2011 asked him to go to India along with one of their woman modules and help her settle there as their resident agent. The police said Imran and Soofia were to proceed later to Agra from Delhi where they were to meet their another associate and work out further course of action.

The police had also recovered from the duo their Pakistani passports, having no Indian visa besides Imran's national identity card and Soofia's citizenship card of Kanwal, Imran's driving license and election identity card issued earlier from Gujarat.