India for stricter infiltration sentences

NEW DELHI, June 17 (UPI) -- India's Supreme Court has ruled stricter sentences should be imposed on infiltrators from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

"There is need for imposing stricter sentence under the Foreigners Act," the Supreme Court held in its ruling.

A vacation bench consisting of Justices Arijit Pasayat and P.P. Naolekar dismissed an appeal by a Pakistani national, Habib Ibrahim, who illegally entered India to meet his wife and children in Jaipur. He challenged a Rajasthan High Court order, which upheld a five-year imprisonment awarded by the trial court.

"The only plea to justify the appellant's presence was that he had come to visit his wife and children," said Justice Pasayat in his judgment, adding that does not give him any right to stay illegally in India. The appellant had been issued a transit visa, that too for Nepal, for six months. There was no valid document in his possession to stay in India. Therefore, Section 3 read with Section 14 of the Foreigners Act has been rightly applied. The conviction cannot be faulted, the court said.

While arrested, Ibrahim was carrying a Pakistani passport and an expired Nepalese visa. A session court in Jaipur sentenced him to five-year imprisonment. The Rajasthan government said he had knowingly stayed in India without a visa, and no leniency should be shown to him.