Iranian woman's husband detained for 'involvement' in loot

The husband of an Iranian woman who was arrested for allegedly looting a shopkeeper in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur Dehat district a day ago has been detained, police said on Wednesday.

Umar and his wife, Samira Bodaghizadeh, are suspected to have formed a gang of four-five members and made several persons as their soft targets during their stay in the country, an officer said.

According to the police, Bodaghizadeh, a resident of Iran capital Tehran, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly looting Rs 50,000 from a shopkeeper at Nehru Nagar in Rasulabad town, 70 km from Kanpur. The 28-year-old and her accomplices had fled after offering to exchange notes of Rs 200 with that of Rs 500. The woman was caught by locals, while her accomplices managed to flee with the money.

Umar was detained after a preliminary probe confirmed his alleged involvement in a loot. He will be sent to jail on Thursday, Superintendent of Police Anurag Vats said.

Bodaghizadeh was produced before a court on Wednesday and sent to jail, Vats said.

Intelligence Bureau and state intelligence officials interrogated the couple and found nothing to establish their possible link with terror groups, the SP said.

"We couldn't extract much information from the Iranian couple as we struggled to understand them since they spoke only a few words in Hindi and could not speak in English," Anoop Kumar, additional superintendent of police, said.

Various documents, including passports, visas and journey tickets recovered from the couple, confirmed that they had come to India on May 12. They had visited Nepal twice since and visited dozens of cities in the state and elsewhere, the ASP said.

"Police are trying to establish the identities of the victims whom the Iranian gang had looted in the recent past. Efforts also being made to establish the identities of those Iranian nationals who had taken part in the crime," Vats added.