8 Rohingyas held in Assam district close to Bangladesh

Eight Rohingyas, including women and children, who had illegally entered India, have been arrested from a house in South Assam's Hailakandi district, where they had been reportedly taking shelter for some time now.

Hailakandi Superintendent of Police, Pabindra Kumar Nath said in a statement that the eight Rohingyas were arrested from the house of Md.Yusuf Ali Mazumdar, son of Abdul Zabbar Mazumdar of Mazarpar village under Algapur Police Station. They were arrested based on a tip-off.

Five of the arrested Rohingyas are children aged between 2 and 16 years. All of them are residents of Saheb Bazar village under the Mondu police station, Boisidom district in Myanmar, said the statement.

Yusuf Ali Mazumdar, in whose house the Rohingyas were taking shelter, is absconding but his brother Islamuddin Mazumdar has been apprehended, it said.

A case has been registered at Algapur police station and all have been booked under Section 120(B) of the IPC, Section 14 of the Foreigners' Act and Section 4 of the Passport (Entry to India) Act, and Rule 6 of the Passport (Entry to India) Act.

The arrest comes four days after 14 Rohingyas were arrested from the Agartala-New Delhi Special Rajdhani Express. They had reportedly told the police that they fled the Rohingya refugee camps at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh and crossed the border in Tripura before boarding the train at Dharmanagar in Tripura. They were caught on the train at New Jalpaiguri railway station in North Bengal on Tuesday.

Over 100 Rohingya refugees have been arrested in Assam and Tripura in the past few months but this is for the first time that it was found that the Rohingyas fled the Cox's Bazar refugee camps.

An estimated 9,00,000 Rohingya refugees fled the Rakhine state of Myanmar bordering Bangladesh following an ethnic clash and have been taking shelter in crowded settlements in Cox's Bazar. Over 7,40,000 are thought to have been fled Myanmar since August 2017.