Gauhati High Court notice to Assam government over detention of two 'declared foreigner' brothers

A bench of justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Malasri Nandi asked the state government to inform about whereabouts of Abu bakkar Siddik and his brother Akbar Ali, in the next hearing on June 4.

Guwahati: A bench of the Gauhati High Court on Thursday served a notice to the Assam government directing it to disclose the whereabouts of two brothers, who were declared foreigners in 2017 but were detained on May 25 by the state police.

A bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Malasri Nandi asked the state government to inform about the whereabouts of Abu Bakkar Siddik and his brother Akbar Ali, in the next hearing on June 4.

The court served the notice during the hearing of a writ petition filed by Torap Ali, the nephew of the two persons.

Ali told the court that the duo were summoned by the officer-in-charge at Nagarbera police station in Kamrup district on May 25 morning, but they were subsequently detained by police. Their family members visited the foreigner detention camp at Matia in Goalpara, but the officials there informed them that they were not in the camp.

"The petitioner is now apprehensive that his uncles will be pushed back to Bangladesh. So he appealed for the court's directive that no coercive action be taken till he has had the opportunity to challenge the opinion on December 12, 2017, pronouncing them as foreigners," one of the lawyers of the petitioner, Aman Wadud, said.

Siddik and Ali were detained on December 12, 2017, after they were declared foreigners by a foreign tribunal. They were lodged in a detention camp but were released on "conditional bail" on April 22, 2020, as per an order of the Supreme Court in 2019. Counsel for the government informed the court that the duo were in the custody of the border branch of the state police.

Several such "declared foreigners" were released on "conditional bail", and they were required to be present at the local police station from time to time.

Many such "declared foreigners" remained detained at Matia camp but could not be deported due to a lack of verification of their addresses by the Bangladesh government. This has delayed the deportation. Most of them claim that they are Indian citizens and were declared foreigners due to minor anomalies in their documents, such as errors in the spelling of names or addresses. They were declared foreigners as they failed to prove that they or their forefathers lived in India on or before March 24, 1971, the cut-off date decided in the Assam Accord of 1985. The Accord was signed following the six-year-long anti-foreigners movement (1979-1985).

Push back route:

The petition was filed when several such declared foreigners have been pushed back to Bangladesh by the BJP-led government in Assam in the past few weeks. CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said the government adopted the "push back policy" to avoid legal hassles.