No record to show US shooter Tashfeen Malik visited India: Government

NEW DELHI: A thorough check run by Indian intelligence agencies on immigration or visa records has failed to show up any trace of California mass shooting suspect Tashfeen Malik's visit to India in 2013, as alleged by a Saudi interior ministry official.

Intelligence officials on Wednesday concluded that Malik had never visited or stayed in India, as there exists no record of her two Pakistani passports — passport number BF 0760081 valid from 2008 to 2013 and passport number KE-512100 issued thereafter from Riyadh — in the immigration records. "She may have at best transited through India to a third country, but then such detail would not show up in immigration records," said an officer. "There is no way a Pakistani citizen can escape the scanner as the checks are much stringent in their case. Malik may have either not visited at all or transited through an Indian airport on a connecting flight," he said.

Saudi interior ministry spokesperson was on Tuesday quoted by the New York Times as saying that Malik had traveled from Saudi Arabia to India in October 2013.
Indian agencies believe that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, clearly under pressure to deny any links with the California mass shooting suspects, are trying to lob the ball in other's court.

As per information comcompiled by the agencies here, Tashfeen Malik was born on July 13, 1986, in Wahova, Taunsa Sharif, Pakistan. Her father's name was Gulzar Ahmed, who moved to Saudi Arabia two years after his marriage in 1977.

Malik did her schooling from Pakistan International School, Riyadh. She completed her Doctor of Pharmacy from Baha-ud-Din Zakria University, Multan, in 2013 and undertook her training from CMH, Multan till March 2013. Thereafter she moved to Saudi Arabia. Malik married Syed Rizwan Farooq, a food inspector, after meeting him on a matrimonial site. Both Farooq and Malik were shot dead after they killed 14 people in a mass shooting at St Bernardino, California.

NYT had, in its Tuesday's edition, reported that 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.

"Then, in 2013, she arrived on June 8 from Pakistan and departed for India on October 6 the same year," Turki was quoted as saying. He, however, did not elaborate on whether she reached India and how long she stayed there.