Declared foreigner as not attended trial to save cancer-afflicted son: Assam man released from detention camp

A 50-year-old man, who was released on bail from a detention camp in South Assam claimed that he was declared a foreigner by a tribunal in 2018 after he could not attend its hearing due to cancer of his son.

"My son was battling with blood cancer at that time. I was worried about how to save him. I am a poor man and whatever money I had I used it on his treatment, but he died. In the process, I could not attend the hearing. It was also not easy for me to hire a lawyer and attend the hearing. But when police came to my house last year, I was told that I was declared a foreigner," Joydev Ghosh told reporters on Thursday soon after he came out of Silchar detention camp in Cachar district. Ghosh worked in a shop until he was arrested.

Ghosh, a resident of Badarpur in neighbouring Karimganj district was declared a foreigner by Karimganj foreigner tribunal on August 8, 2018. Karimganj shares border with Bangladesh, a stretch of which is still unfenced.

Suspecting him to be a foreigner (a post-March 24, 1971 migrant from Bangladesh), border branch of Assam police registered a case in 2016 and forwarded it to the tribunal. He was arrested in May last year and placed in the detention camp.

Ghosh was granted bail days after a bench of Gauhati High Court set aside the tribunal's judgement and asked it for a fresh hearing of his citizenship claims.

The high court observed that Ghosh should get one last chance since he was declared a foreigner in an ex-parte order as he never appeared for trial. Ghosh's lawyer approached the high court challenging the tribunal's judgment.

The tribunal record showed that Ghosh appeared on the first date of hearing on August 24, 2017. On subsequent dates, his lawyer kept on seeking fresh dates from the tribunal to record a written statement. But the tribunal later declared him as a foreigner in an ex-parte order.