The arrest of three suspected Al-Qaeda operatives from among the migrant community has brought to focus yet again the absence of a clear policy to effectively police the vast migrant community residing in the district.
Arbitrary surveillance and interrogation of migrants without valid reasons, a senior police officer said, ran counter to their rights guaranteed under the Constitution and would attract legal reprimand if questioned in a court of law.
“After all, they too are Indians and have the right to move around and work anywhere in the country. Instead, there needs to be a clear policy for law enforcement agencies on how to monitor them,” he said, adding that it was for the Labour Department to collect data on the migrant workforce.
The department, however, hardly has any comprehensive database. Till before the outbreak of the pandemic, it had issued insurance cards to around 1.12 lakh migrant workers, and that remains the only database with the department for all practical purposes, said a senior District Labour Officer.
While the police ask contractors to regularly update details of migrants, the latter often engage in gross under-reporting to substantially reduce their financial commitments, thus rendering the entire exercise futile. That migrants are a heavily floating population further complicates their effective monitoring.
The police had in 2011 launched a programme to audit labour camps in Ernakulam Rural following suspicion that the large migrant workforce was being used as an effective cover by Maoists. But that project fell through owing to lack of cooperation from contractors.
Verification of original identity documents also remains far from foolproof considering that in the past even illegal migrants were found to have original Indian documents. “There are thriving rackets in the border districts of West Bengal and Assam that run fake document factories,” said the police officer.
For instance, four illegal Bangladesh migrants deported from the Kochi airport in 2018 were found to have Indian passports, Aadhaar, and PAN cards.
Despite the bi-monthly meeting of various stakeholders, including the Railway Protection Force, Government Railway Police, and the local police, to take stock of the migrant scene, it has had little impact.
