An Indian-origin man in Arkansas, Kapil Raghu, is seeking to have his US visa reinstated after he was wrongly arrested after local police mistook a bottle of perfume labelled "opium" for an illegal drug during a routine traffic stop. This led to his arrest in May, following which he was sent to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Now, the man is living under the threat of deportation, said his attorney.

Raghu, who is married to an American citizen and was working toward permanent residency, was pulled over by Benton police on May 3 for a minor traffic violation. After stopping, the police officers found a small bottle labelled "opium" in his car and assumed it contained the banned narcotic. Despite Raghu's insistence that it was simply a designer fragrance,

See Full Page