Who's That Girl? Not Miss Uzbekistan: Miss World Pageant Mystery over Rahima Ganieva's Identity

Miss World beauty pageant has been infiltrated by a mysterious woman, competing as Miss Uzbekistan although her government maintains she is not representing the country and nobody appears to know who she is and how she got there.

On the official Miss World website, Rahima Ganieva describes herself as an 18-year-old from the Uzbek capital Tashkent, who loves to play the piano and enjoys many other activities, including playing tennis, travelling, and learning history.

"Let me introduce myself. My name is Rakhima Ganieva. I am from a beautiful and sunny city Tashkent, her profile reads. "I am 18 years old. I have graduated from Tashkent Professional College of Tourism and I plan to enter the university, probably the law faculty."

The brunette and dark-eyed girl says she is "very excited and happy" to have flown to Indonesia to take part to the 63rd edition of the Miss World pageant, which is due to start later this month.

An eager reader of Russian writers including, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, on her Facebook page Ganieva is seen as she prepares for the pageant's final with some of her colleagues.

Her presence in Jakarta triggered media frenzy in Uzbekistan, as the country had never sent a representative to compete for the Miss World title before.

The simple reason for this was that no Miss Uzbekistan competition exists.

The Uzbek Culture and Sports Ministry and the national committee on women told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, they had no knowledge of Ganieva's participation in the Miss World contest, and suggested she was an impostor.

Local news website Mezon, said also Tashkent leading modelling agencies had never heard of Ganieva, or of some kind of Miss Uzbekistan contest.

The final blow to Ganieva's credibility was carried by her supposed university, which was said to have no record of her either.

No one from Miss World was available for a comments.