'Afghan girl' arrested in Pakistan

An Afghan woman, immortalised by photographer Steve McCurry on the cover of a 1984 issue of National Geographic magazine, has been arrested in Pakistan.

Sharbat Gula, now in her 40s, was taken into custody from her home in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, police official Tahir Khan said.

Gula has been charged with obtaining Pakistani identity by allegedly forging documents and would face up to seven years in jail if proven guilty, Mr Khan said.

An official of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), a department that deals with forgery cases, confirmed the arrest, releasing an image of Gula in detention.

Officials say Ms Gula applied for a Pakistani identity card in Peshawar in April 2014 using the name Sharbat Bibi. Thousands of Afghan refugees have managed to dodge Pakistan’s computerised system to get an identity card, an increasing problem in the country and evidence of the lengths refugees will go to to escape the conflict in Afghanistan.

Known as the 'Mona Lisa of the Afghan war', McCurry's haunting image of Gula has gone on to become National Geographic magazine's most famous cover photograph. Seventeen years after he took the image, McCurry tracked Gula down in 2002 to a remote Afghan village where she lived with her husband and three daughters.