Published: September 21, 2026
A woman who, according to a U.S. immigration record, admitted that her claim to Liberian nationality was a misrepresentation is now studying Liberian law, advocating for Liberia’s war crimes court and, sources say, is under consideration to represent Liberia in India
MONROVIA – Marpu Dhaliwal, a Monrovia businesswoman and one of the most visible public advocates for Liberia’s war crimes court, is being considered for appointment as Liberia’s ambassador to India, sources close to the Executive Mansion have told The Liberian Investigator, a posting that would send to New Delhi a woman who held an Indian passport describing her as born in Punjab at the same time she held a Liberian passport describing her as born in Monrovia.
By Lennart Dodoo
Both passports, obtained by The Liberian Investigator, list the same date of birth, Nov. 1, 1971, but disagree on everything else: the name, nationality, and country of birth. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo to file, also obtained by The Liberian Investigator, identifies the holder of both as one woman, Paramjit Dhaliwal, alias Marpu, an Indian citizen born in India, and records that she admitted misrepresenting herself as a Liberian national when she applied for asylum in the United States.
The Liberian Investigator has not independently verified that Dhaliwal is under consideration. Liberia reopened its embassy in New Delhi on Thursday, Aug. 13, restoring a resident diplomatic mission after more than 35 years. Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti represented President Joseph Nyuma Boakai at the inauguration. The reopening announcement did not name an ambassador. According to sources, Dhaliwal has been positioning herself for the job, including by enrolling at the Foreign Service Institute and highlighting her knowledge of Indian languages.
Whoever takes it would be Liberia’s first resident envoy in India since the mission closed, at a post the government has said will focus on consular support for the Liberians who study, seek medical treatment and travel there, and on trade and investment. Citizenship questions that pass unnoticed in private business become central when someone is put forward to speak for the state, and more so to the country where the records say she was born.
Two passports, two birthplaces
The first Liberian ordinary passport was issued on Nov. 7, 1997, and expired on Nov. 6, 2002. It lists the holder as Marpu Pearl Dhaliwal, born Nov. 1, 1971, in Monrovia, Montserrado County. She signed it “Marpu P.Z. Dhaliwal,” the form used in a 2009 Liberian news report for the president of the Indo-Liberia Friendship Society.
Eighty-nine days later, on Feb. 4, 1998, an immigration judge in Newark, New Jersey, denied an asylum claim filed by a woman the CBP memo calls Marpu Dhaliwal and ordered her removed from the United States. The memo says she made the claim under what it describes as her Liberian identity and that the order remained in effect years later.
Eighteen months after that, on Aug. 5, 1999, the Consulate General of India in New York issued passport No. B0250370 to Paramjit Kaur Dhaliwal, born Nov. 1, 1971, at New Abadi, Jullundur, in Punjab. It ran to Aug. 4, 2009. For three years and three months, both passports were valid.
The second Liberian passport, No. L 0836432, was issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Oct. 19, 2007 and ran to Oct. 18, 2012. It records her nationality as Liberian, her place of birth as Monrovia, her address as Monrovia and her profession as business. It overlapped the Indian passport for another year and nine months.
Both list birth in Monrovia, which a birth record would support and a naturalization certificate would not. What the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accepted, in 1997 and again in 2007, has not been made public.
What the U.S. memo says
The memo says the subject arrived on a Jet Airways flight from Brussels seeking admission as a returning lawful permanent resident, presenting Indian passport No. B0250370 and a green card, and was sent to secondary inspection as an exact match to a lookout posted by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. A review of U.S. immigration databases and two files faxed from the National Records Center, it says, turned up the asylum claim, the denial, and the 1998 removal order.
She then “purposely and fraudulently concealed the facts of the asylum claim and subsequent deportation order from USCIS when she adjusted status to legal permanent resident as the daughter of a USC on December 15, 2005. It closes: “A call was placed on the subject’s behalf to her father.”
A source told The Liberian Investigator that the Liberian woman, Zeppora Marpu Flemming, Dhaliwal has named as her mother died of cancer in the early 1970s, before Dhaliwal is said to have arrived in the country, and that the woman’s children have said publicly they never knew her as a sibling.
The memo says she admitted both points put to her, that she had misrepresented herself as a Liberian national in the asylum application and that she had failed to disclose it when she applied for permanent residence. It found her inadmissible on two grounds under the Immigration and Nationality Act, fraud or misrepresentation and arriving as an immigrant without an immigrant visa, the second treating her green card as invalid. She was placed in removal proceedings, issued a notice to appear and was to be held at the Elizabeth Detention Facility in New Jersey pending a hearing.
Liberia’s Constitution limits real property ownership to citizens. If Dhaliwal is not a citizen, the various parcels of land she holds in and around Monrovia would be called into question.
A rising profile
Dhaliwal has been visible in Liberia’s Indian and business communities for more than 15 years. DITCO’s website identifies her as the company’s president, and a 2009 Liberian news report named “Marpu P.Z. Dhaliwal” as president of the Indo-Liberia Friendship Society, when she pressed a visiting Indian minister for medical assistance to Liberia, one of the areas the reopened embassy is now meant to work in.
She delivered the keynote address Sept. 5 at the closing of the second edition of the Grade School Ambassadorial Program, organized by the Office for the Establishment of the War and Economic Crimes Court, where she called on Boakai to convene an extraordinary session of the Legislature to take up the war crimes and anti-corruption court bills.
The 2021 allegations
In March and April 2021, The New Dawn and The Analyst reported that Dhaliwal’s legal name is Paramjit Kaur Dhaliwal, that she was born Nov. 1, 1971, in Jalandhar, Punjab, and that she grew up and was educated in India before arriving in Liberia in the 1980s. The Indian passport corroborates the name, the date, and the place. New Abadi, Jullundur, is the older rendering of Jalandhar.
The papers alleged she obtained Liberian citizenship documents improperly, later acquired Overseas Citizenship of India status, bought land in Monrovia as a Liberian, and avoided taxes owed by foreign nationals. Overseas Citizenship of India is a status for foreign nationals of Indian origin and is not held alongside an Indian passport, so any such status would have followed the expiry or surrender of the one she carried until 2009.
The law school question
Dhaliwal is a senior student at the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law and an associate member of the Liberia National Bar Association, the source said. Studying law in Liberia does not require citizenship. Practicing it does.
The school’s application form, a copy of which the source showed The Liberian Investigator, asks applicants for their country of origin, nationality and any previous nationality, and whether they have ever been accused, interrogated by a public agency, charged, prosecuted or convicted of a crime. What Dhaliwal declared, and what identity documents she filed with it, has not been made public. Those answers would be central to whether her admission was properly obtained.
What the series will pursue
The Liberian Investigator in subsequent series to follow would be looking deep into the following: what documents Liberia relied on to issue Dhaliwal a birth certificate and passports, what the holds for a Monrovia birth on Nov. 1, 1971, who the U.S. citizen was who petitioned for her residency as her father, what she declared to the University of Liberia and the bar, whether the U.S. records are genuine and how the proceedings ended, whether, and by whom, she has been put forward for the India post, and whom the Foreign Ministry has named to head the reopened mission.
The records also show the importance of care with the Dhaliwal name in Liberia. A 2016 Liberian court case involving DITCO refers to a male “M.P. Dhaliwal,” identified as the elder brother of two other Dhaliwal family members. That man is a different person from Marpu Dhaliwal, whose own signature on her 1997 passport carries the same initials.
Coming in Part 2: the U.S. immigration file, and how Dhaliwal returned to Liberia.
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