Dubai: Indian Mohammad Anwer Ali, 37, is afraid to go out of UAE.
It has been the case for the past six years because of ‘excessive scrutiny’ he faces every time he passes through immigration. Apparently someone else with the same name has been blacklisted by UAE authorities.
“I got curious after I started getting hauled up at Dubai’s airports. I thought this couldn’t be a coincidence every time. When I asked an officer why I was being taken to a separate room all the time and made to wait, he told me they were making sure that the other Mohammad Anwer Ali who’s blacklisted in the UAE and I are not the same,” said the business analyst at a Dubai travel company.
“Once an immigration officer even pressed the alarm button to call police, thinking I was the man on the run,” he adds.
An incident at Hong Kong airport last year got Ali really worried. “I always thought the problem was in Dubai, but when I was stopped for beyond a reasonable time last October at Chep Lap Kok airport, I felt the matter could be serious,” said the Hyderabadi man whose passport was verified for several minutes before he was finally allowed to enter Hong Kong.
Ali faced a similar situation earlier this year in Jakarta, Indonesia. “I knew it takes a while to go through the papers, but in my case it was different. The officer even closed the counter for others, so he could go through my papers. It took him 30 minutes to establish I was a different man.”
A visit to the Department of Naturalisation and Residency Dubai in Al Jaffliya did not help either. “The officer told me that they cannot do anything for me at the moment and cannot even issue the E-gate pass. They asked me to come again in July,” he said.
The spooked man who lives with his wife and mother in Ajman is having second thoughts on plans to visit US this summer.
