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UAs the title suggests, my dearest friend was travelling to Nepal for her brother’s wedding. Her native place is nepal but she’s a proper Indian citizen. Born and brought up in India. Did her schooling and college in India, and now presently doing her job here as well. Her parents were born in Nepal but they have Indian citizenship. She occassionally goes to Nepal and it never was a problem until now when she had her layover at mumbai.
Apparently her father had made her a Nepal citizenship 10 years ago so that she could continue her studies there or so that they can transfer their property in her name. But they were unaware that dual citizenship is not permitted in India. They never had any sort of problems because they never experienced layover in mumbai until recently.
Yesterday based on the way she looks they asked her origin and she said she’s of Nepali origin. They conducted a search a found Nepali citizenship card on her mobile phone. They came to conclusion that she’s a Nepali and she forged her indian documents. They immediately put her under arrest and charged her with 336(3), 340(2), 318(4) BNS. The police asked for a certain amount for her to be released yesterday itself. Today’s her hearing at court for bail and I have arranged a lawyer here at court itself, they claim they’ll give her bail today itself. Please guide me on what I can do further on to help her win this case and reclaim her indian citizenship back. And please mention if you guys know any good immigration lawyers as well. PLEASE HELP. Her parents are in Nepal right now and they’re helpless at this moment.
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MShe needs a good immigration lawyer. Her parents should’ve thought about it before making Nepali citizenship. As soon as you have Nepali citizenship, you’re not a citizen of India. And if she had represented that she was an Indian citizen, she has technically committed an offence.
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USo during the course of this case she’ll need to re apply for indian citizenship? Or is it not needed once she surrenders her nepali citizenship?
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MAm immigration lawyer who has dealt with similar cases can answer better. Don’t do anything workout consulting someone who knows immigration laws.
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SWhich one is more important to her? She’ll need to give up one. If she claims to be an Indian, she can’t claim not too know the law because you should. If she claims to be an Nepali, she can claim she didn’t know indian law.
If she has an Indian passport and the details are identical to the Nepali passport, they can blame that on the passport making authority. If her parents did everything legally, she should be a resident of India, not citizen. If she’s a resident, she’s legally allowed to have the ID related documents that she does.
If she hasn’t bribed anyone and gotten everything legally, the forgery charge won’t lead to conviction. It could be an surveyor at extortion or just stupidity.
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IThere are a lot of people around me right now who have no clue either. Our schooling should have such topics to study.
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DThis is a serious offense and Reddit won’t be a help here.
Approach a good immigration lawyer in Mumbai who can handle NRI affairs like Prem Kumar Pandey and Associates , Vaibhav Chaudhari and associates or MZM legal .
Be ready to spend a LOT of money. 1 Lakh is nothing.
Dual citizenship is serious offense and you can be jailed upto 5 years.
Don’t think of running away while out on bail. This may very much complicate matters as in India authorities sometime love to pursue trivial matters.
Hope you sort out the case .
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UBut she has been charged with forgery of indian documents which we can prove otherwise right? After that we’ll just need to surrender the nepalese citizenship right, and maybe apply for indian citizenship again?
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Dthe current case of forgery of Passport itself is a severe criminal charge is least of your worries. Get a good lawyer and although it’s a tough road you can get this quashed depending upon what evidence you have.
But I doubt you can surrender Indian passport easily now.
What I understand 2 things can take place
1) the charges can be upgraded under Passport act 1967 for holding dual citizenship which is again severe and involves long jail term and fine.
2) if you are able to get the forgery case quashed she can be immediately re- arrested for dual citizenship under above act. Because you jsut proved she is holding 2 citizenships knowingly.
Remember the crime is already committed. You cannot just go and surrender passport now.
In either of the above 2 cases you are in serious trouble.
Get solid legal representation. Inform Nepal embassy and get ready a lot of money.
Again this is my observation and not a legal advice
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Uthe scope of the term “forgery” must be evaluated in this case. Although forgery in its normal sense is well-known and all the documents she does have are officially issued, there are provisions in the to cover this aspect.
The authorities have issued these documents under the impression that she’s an indian citizen. But if the prosecution can prove that she’s not an indian citizen on the dates of issue of the said documents, she’ll be in real trouble my friend. Obtaining official documents by furnishing false information is not a petty offense.
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DExactly . That’s my point. The merits of the case have to be seen. When and under what conditions she took the citizenship will also be investigated.
All in all it looks like a long time and serious headache for the girl and her family .
I am overseas citizen and still I keep an Indian lawyer on salary to keep my paperwork investments etc updated. You don’t want to fall in the legal loophole
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SWhat would putting them in jail achieve? They are not Indian citizen, wasting Indian money by putting them in jail. Why not just deport them.
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DAs per OP she is an Indian citizen . She holds Indian passport . She was trying to change flight using Indian Passport . She is under Indian law. Read carefully .
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DShe is Indian citizen carrying Indian passport she committed crime that makes her liable to be imprisoned . What it will achieve you can ask the judge
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UShe definitely needs a good immigration lawyer. I don’t think she can easily “give up” her Nepali citizenship and then get back her Indian one, because from what I understand, the moment you acquire foreign, technically your Indian citizenship is revoked. Though there is a process to surrender your Indian passport.
You can re-acquire Indian citizenship by getting OCI, having it for 5 years, and then residing in India for 1 of those 5 years. Though if she gets charged, this (getting OCI) is probably not an option. Good luck to your friend.
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VHow is she a “proper” Indian citizen, she surrendered her Indian citizenship and took Nepali citizenship.
I doubt her father did this without her knowledge.
I hope she is arrested and put in jail for citizenship fraud, and then deported.
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SHow did they confiscate her phone without any cause? They saw her indian valid passport so there was no cause to search her phone without any warrant.
Sketchy.
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MThey must have checked her phone and found Nepalese documents there. So they seized it. I know this is routine for hostile countries like Bangladesh or Pakistan.
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SI’m talking about how they can confiscate the content of the phone without a warrant or cause? Unless the person was dumb enough to give it away.
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ANAL: The story doesn’t add up. Nepalese people don’t look so much different from Indian people that they may raise suspicion at Airports. Have a few Nepalese friends, mostly look almost similar to Indians. If that was the case every person from North-East would face this issue.
India has naturalization by birth. If she is born in India, she is Indian citizen by default.
If she was a minor at the time her parents applied for Nepalese citizenship then she can use it as defence, but why will they search her phone at immigration? And if she is knowingly carrying Nepalese citizenship then she is at fault.
I don’t think this is a straight story. Hidden facts may be?-
UIndia removed citizenship by birth after July 1987. Post this date, you can be a citizen only by descent (ie, one parent is an Indian citizen) or by naturalization.
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AIndia has not removed citizenship by birth. [source ](https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/)
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SActually the story makes sense. Inbound flights from Nepal would go through immigration. Now if she was a Nepali citizen, and presented Nepali passport, she would’ve walked out from there without a hitch. But she presented an Indian passport. Nepalis come to India for work but I’m not sure if they actually apply for Indian citizenship in large numbers given the process isn’t easy and requires people to surrender their Nepali citizenship and lose access to properties and rights in their native land.
Now what’s interesting and the part OP had conveniently excluded is that if the lady didn’t know that her father had applied for Nepali citizenship then why was there Nepali documents on her phone? We only scan active documents in our phones.
Maybe they were not aware that it’s a crime. Wonder why the Nepali embassy didn’t inform her, or ask for some documentation from Indian embassy (other countries do). During this process, the Indian embassy clearly calls out the process to surrender the Indian citizenship and passport before handing the documents required to apply for citizenship of the other country. That checkpoint is always there. Unless Nepali embassy is a bunch of idiots and provided citizenship without documents I’m guessing the documentation on the other side was a complete fraud.
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AWell she’s into big problem and the Indian Govt. Takes the citizenship act very seriously. Most likely she’ll be stripped of her Indian citizenship and if she’s lucky she might just be deported to Nepal.
Incase they wanna escalate the matter. She will be facing a possible jail term as well.
I myself have acquired EU citizenship and things that were made very clear to me at the local Indian Embassy was once I have acquired a foreign passport in no case I’m allowed to travel with the Indian passport and I need to immediately surrender to the embassy.
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HAs per Article 9 of the Indian Constitution and Section 9 of Citizenship Act, if someone acquires citizenship of another state, they will cease to be a citizen of India. However, that being said, a person from Nepal can visit India without any visa. The reason she is apprehended is because she is still using Indian identification documents after acquiring Nepal citizenship. This is a very serious offence (maximum sentence possible is life imprisonment) and under normal circumstances there would be no good solutions.
However, since India has good relations with Nepal, you should immediately get in touch with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of External Affairs and Embassy of Nepal, and explain the whole situation to them. Let them sort it out amongst themselves. There is a chance of them intervening and helping you out if they are convinced that your friend made a genuine mistake.
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