GUWAHATI
Police in western Assam’s Barpeta district sent 28 people declared non-citizens by the Foreigners’ Tribunals (FTs) to a ‘transit camp’ at Matia in the Goalpara district on Monday (September 2, 2024).
Transit camp is the official term for the 3,000-capacity detention centre for foreigners to be deported.
Also read: How do Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals function? | Explained
The 28 people — 19 men and nine women — were summoned from various parts of the district to the office of Barpeta’s Superintendent of Police (SP) before being herded into a bus and sent to the detention centre.
All the people declared foreigners belong to the Bengali Muslim community.
Sushanta Biswa Sarma, the district SP told journalists in district headquarters Barpeta that the individuals were declared as foreign nationals after extensive search operations and legal scrutiny.
“The police acted on the tribunal’s directive and ensured the transportation of the declared foreigners to the transit camp,” he said, underscoring the government’s efforts to identify and detain people suspected to be living in Assam illegally.
A video shared on social media platforms showed family members of the FT-declared “foreigners” gathered outside the SP’s office, crying and hugging each other.
Established under the Foreigners’ (Tribunal) Order of 1964, the FTs are quasi-judicial bodies headed by members to adjudicate cases of individuals suspected to be foreigners. Such people are detected by the Border wing of the Assam police, whose primary job is to detect suspected foreigners and refer them to the FTs.
Assam has 100 FTs to deal with the cases of D (doubtful) voters and foreigners living in the State illegally. The D-voters are barred from casting their votes according to an order of the Election Commission of India in 1997.
On August 22, the State’s Home Department informed the State Assembly that 54,411 out of 1,19,570 D-voters were declared foreigners by the FTs, the first set of which was established in 2005 after the Supreme Court scrapped the contentious Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act. The department also said the Matia transit camp currently houses 210 declared foreigners.
Arrested for social media posts
Monday’s development followed the arrest of two Muslim men for uploading content found objectionable by the State government.
While 31-year-old Altaf Hussain was arrested on August 31 by the police in Dhubri district’s Gauripur for “distorting” an Assamese Bihu song uploaded on YouTube, 20-year-old Sanidul Hoque was arrested by the Barpeta police on August 30 for posting “objectionable images” of Hindu deities on his social media handles.
Hussain works for a private telecom company. Hoque is a third-semester graduation student at a college in Barpeta town.
The former’s song in Bengali, similar to the Bangladeshi protest song ‘Deshta tomaar baaper nai?’ (Does your father own this country?) during the uprising to oust Sheikh Hasina, was uploaded amid a backlash against the ‘Miyas’ (Bengali Muslims) following the gang-rape of a minor girl in central Assam’s Dhing.
