The allegations by Rahul Mehta, the Indian-origin deportee from the United Kingdom, who claims he was harnessed and assaulted by immigration staff on August 14 at Heathrow and offloaded from a Jet Airways flight to Delhi are born up by his medical reports, even though a Metropolitan police officer in statement to The Hindu had denied that Mr. Mehta was injured.
Mr. Mehta was examined on August 15th by a Dr. Jabbar who noted that “as a result of being restrained at the airport” his wrist was swollen "with red marks and bruises evident", that his right side chest wall had a 5 centimeters long scratch, and that his left thigh was tender and swollen. The doctor ordered an X-ray of his left wrist.
If this incident had not occurred, and the captain of Jet Airways 9W 121 had not offloaded the protesting Mr. Mehta from the plane, he would have been in India now, a relative stranger to the country of his origin, with no money and no support system to re-build his life. For high profile criminal cases the United Kingdom has prisoner exchange agreements with several countries.
However, in the category that Mr. Mehta comes over, there is no such handing over and settlement assistance of any kind by the receiving country. Once the UK shuts its doors on them, such offenders are pretty much cast into an unfamiliar and often hostile environment, and often return to a life of crime.
At the end of March 2014 there were 8,003 foreign offenders in prison in England and Wales, with a further 4247 living in the communities pending removal after having finished their sentence, according to an all party parliamentary group report on foreign national offenders that submitted its report in January.
Offenders from countries of the European Union are subject to a more lenient deportation process, which many see as discriminatory in itself – after all punishment for the same crime cannot be tailored to be less or more harsh depending on the nationality of the person.
However, it is the lack of sensitivity to the specific circumstances facing many sub-categories within the larger group of foreign national offenders that has made the whole system appear unfair and inhumane in the eyes of the deportees, their families, lawyers, and activists fighting their cause.
Take Rahul Mehta’s case. “To claim that people like Rahul are foreigners is to me dubious. He has lived here since he was 12, and his family, including his child, are citizens,” Kushal Sood, Solicitor for Trent Chambers told The Hindu . He was convicted of attempted rape and sexual assault at 19, but completed his prison sentence and his currently in rehabilitation.
Second, the deportation process itself takes at least four to five years, according to Mr. Sood. During this time the family situation of the person would have dramatically changed. “They get married and have children, and parents become old and need care. There is no reassessment of family circumstances by the authorities at the time of intended removal,” he said. “Further, the offender’s formal rehabilitation process that sets in after a prison sentence, is oriented towards becoming a good citizen of British society and not the society to which he/she is to be sent.”
The Trent Chambers alone has fought at least 100 cases that of Mr. Mehta’s, of young immigrants mainly from poor Commonwealth or third world countries that have historical links to the UK, whose families out of either ignorance or fear do not apply for citizenship for their children early enough. Once the child grows and commits a crime it is too late to apply for citizenship.
In an article in Citizenship Studies on the detention and deportation of foreign national offenders, Mary Bosworth from the Centre for Criminology at Oxford notes the differences in the bargaining power of asylum seekers who have “moral and ethical claims to ‘sanctuary’…[and] often have quite vocal supporters..”, and foreign national offenders. The latter group “have limited numbers of supporters either in prison or in the community outside their immediate family.”
She argues that an ex-offender, despite having done his/her time in prison, is faced with a legal barrier to citizenship. “Now legally a barrier to citizenship as well, a criminal conviction for non-citizens has a far greater and more deleterious ramification for non-nationals than ever before, creating a kind of double jeopardy, wherein purely on the basis of citizenship, punishment will effectively vary.”
