New Delhi: India has asked Saudi Arabia for travel details of Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani woman suspect in the California mass shooting, after Saudi authorities claimed that she had travelled to India in 2013.
The move comes after Saudi Interior Ministry Maj Gen Mansour Turki told The New York Times that Malik had visited India from Saudi Arabia. According to official sources, central security agencies swung into action following the claim and checked all the data available at immigration airports for details.
However, no passenger by the name of Malik had entered India either on the date mentioned by Saudi authorities to the newspaper or around that period as well, the sources said.
Central agencies have now got in touch with the Saudi authorities to share relevant details. The agencies have also approached the US investigators to share details, if any, about her visit to India.
The sources, however, did not rule out the possibility of her travelling under a different name. However, those details will only be available after the authorities either in Saudi or the US share them, they said.
The 27-year-old California mass shooting suspect travelled to India from Saudi Arabia once in 2013, a year before she went to the United States with her husband, The New York Times quoted Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour Turki as saying.
As per the report, Malik had left for India after one of her visits to the Saudi kingdom. Malik had arrived in Saudi Arabia in June, 2008, from Pakistan to visit her father and stayed for about nine weeks before returning to Pakistan, the official informed.
"Then, in 2013, she arrived on June 8, from Pakistan, and departed for India on October 6 of the same year," Turki was quoted as saying in the report.
Fourteen people were killed and several injured when Malik, along with her Pakistani-American husband Syed Rizwan Farook, allegedly opened fire at a centre for the disabled in the Southern California city of San Bernardino last week.
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