Former NRI editor on the run in Britain
Farah Damji, a former magazine editor and daughter of an NRI property tycoon, is absconding from Downview prison in Surrey.
Farah Damji, a former magazine editor and daughter of an NRI property tycoon, has absconded from Downview prison in Surrey where she is serving a three-and-a-half year sentence for dishonesty and perverting the course of justice, police said on Thursday.
The former editor of the Asian lifestyle magazine Another Generation was released to attend a tutorial as part of the Open University sociology degree for which she was studying while in prison.
She was expected to return on Saturday night, but was still on the run on Wednesday and advertising her freedom on her blog on the MySpace.Com website.
"Seems I am the cause for great consternation because I have apparently 'absconded'," she wrote. "I don't think you can call it that."
The Home Office is far from amused by Damji's unauthorised absence. It said: "She is what we call a licence failure. She was released on licence and failed to return."
Damji was convicted at Blackfriars Crown Court last October of thefts totalling 50,000 pounds. She had stolen credit cards from friends and colleagues and gone on shopping spree.
Damji, who has had treatment in jail for drug problems and has a borderline personality disorder, served a six-month sentence at Rikers Island jail in New York for grand larceny and forgery.
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