Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Tuesday that during his tenure as Union Home Minister, he was not aware of any intelligence report on the involvement of undocumented Rohingya immigrants in terrorist activity in India.
Mr. Shinde who took charge as Union Home Minister in July 2012 under the then UPA government, told The Hindu that “Rohingya never troubled us”.
Asked how they entered India as they were undocumented immigrants, Mr. Shinde said, “I do not remember off-hand.”
The former Minister’s remarks come a day after former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the grave threat posed by the Rohingya to national security was a “post-2014 development”.
Nearly 5,700 Rohingya have settled in Jammu since 2012.
On Monday, after the Centre filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court that Rohingya had links to terror outfits such as the Islamic State and those in Pakistan, Mr. Abdullah tweeted, “This threat, at least in J&K, is a post-2014 development. No such intelligence reports ever came up for discussion in Unified Headquarters meetings.”
When contacted on how the Rohingya travelled all the way to settle in Jammu in 2012 and whether the then Congress government asked the State government to accommodate the refugees, Mr. Abdullah said, “These are all questions for the existing State government to answer officially.”
Evidence for SC
A senior Home Ministry official said on Wednesday that if the Supreme Court was not convinced by the Centre’s affidavit regarding Rohingya posing a threat to national security, they would submit another report in a sealed cover.
Home Ministry spokesperson Ashok Prasad said he immediately did not have the details of cases and FIRs filed against Rohingya individuals who had been living in camps, pertaining to their involvement in terror-related cases.
“The Ministry’s stand on issue of involvement of Rohingya with terror groups has been given in concrete terms in an affidavit filed in SC. Details of FIRs registered against them would have to be collected from the State governments,” Mr. Prasad said.
