Assam crackdown on ‘foreigners’ triggers frantic search by family members to trace their whereabouts

Guwahati: A recent summon to their 58-year-old widowed mother to appear before the police in Assam’s Barpeta with citizenship-related documents has turned into a nightmare for her four daughters, who claim they have no information of her whereabouts, and that and she may been deported to Bangladesh.

Their uncle Ashraf Ali, who had accompanied Shona Banu to the police station on May 24, said his sister was declared a ‘foreigner’ in 2017 by the Foreigners' Tribunal, and had already spent over three years in the detention centre, before being released in 2020 following a Supreme Court directive.

''Shona Banu had been appearing before the authorities every Monday and when she received the call to appear before the police again with her documents, we thought it was a routine matter.

“However, she was detained inside the police station for the whole day and we were not allowed to go inside,'' Ali told PTI over phone from his home in Burikhamar village in the district.

He claimed that they have no news of her since, ''but when we were told that videos surfaced in which she has been spotted in Bangladesh, we took a look at those and found her in one of the videos''.

''We are very worried. Her daughters are in tears and keep asking that their mother be brought home. We appeal to the authorities to tell us about her whereabouts, and bring her back if she has been sent to Bangladesh,'' said Ali.

According to him, Shona Banu's case is still pending in the Supreme Court.

Similar is the claim of 42-year-old Manikjan Begum's family, after she was summoned to the Dhula police station in Darrang district with documents to prove her citizenship.

Her eldest son, Barek Ali (22), said, ''She was first called to the Dhula police station on May 23, and the next day, to the office of the SP in Mangaldoi. We were not allowed inside, but since then, we have no news of her.'' ''We have been running from pillar to post, but the authorities are tight-lipped about her whereabouts… We have spotted her along with our only sister of eight months in an online video from Bangladesh,'' claimed Ali.

He said they have approached lawyers for filing a petition in the Gauhati High Court to seek information about her.

Begum was declared a ‘foreigner’ by the tribunal in 2018 and released after she completed two years, as per the Supreme Court directive, from the detention centre at Goalpara.

During the crackdown since May 23 on declared foreign nationals, two persons have been picked up from Jaleswar in Goalpara, and after their documents were checked, one of them was allowed to go home by the police.

The other person, Abdul Hamid Sheikh, was declared a ‘foreigner’ by the tribunal in 2018, and though he was not detained earlier, he has been sent to the detention centre this time, his advocate Hamidul Islam said.

''We are in the process of filing a petition in the high court regarding Sheikh's case,'' Islam said.

The Gauhati High Court had on Thursday directed the Assam government to provide details on the whereabouts of two brothers, declared ‘foreigners’ by the tribunal, and on the ''arbitrary arrest of declared foreigners who are apprehending illegal push back''.

Abu Bakkar Siddik and his brother Akbar Ali were detained by officers of Nagarbera police station in Kamrup district on May 25, and their nephew filed a petition in court, appealing for information about their whereabouts.

The duo's elder brother, Jumuruddin, told PTI that they are five brothers ''and three of us are Indians and two are foreigners. How can that be possible?'' ''We have been asking the authorities where can we meet them... we had also gone to the detention centre at Goalpara, but were told that they were not there. It is only then that our nephew decided to file a petition,'' he said.

Advocate Aman Wadud, who had filed the petition on their behalf, said the state government was ''forcefully pushing declared foreigners to Bangladesh, and there is no Supreme Court order that directed this arbitrary process''.

Earlier, a plea was filed in the Supreme Court, alleging that the Assam government has reportedly launched a "sweeping and indiscriminate drive" to detain and deport persons suspected to be foreigners without nationality verification or exhaustion of legal remedies.

The petition referred to a February 4 order of the apex court which, while dealing with a separate petition, directed Assam to initiate the process of deportation of 63 declared foreign nationals, whose nationality was known, within two weeks.

The advocate said even the Assam government had filed an affidavit, stating that ''without nationality verification and travel permits from the foreign country concerned, these inmates cannot be deported''.

''The state government is going back on its own words and misinterpreting the apex court order,'' Wadud alleged.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had on Friday asserted that detection of foreigners in the state will be expedited, and action against the Declared Foreign Nationals (DFNs) will be taken as per the law.

“We have not taken action against those who have stated that they have appeals pending before the Supreme Court or the high court. Those who have not appealed in the higher judiciary will be pushed back,” he had said.