Naresh Koch became the first 'declared foreigner' to die in captivity in the new year. He happened to belong to the Koch-Rajbongshi community that has been demanding Scheduled Tribe along with five other indigenous communities in Assam.
Doctors at the Guwahati Medical College Hospital said Koch, who was in his mid-50s, died on Friday night due to health complications. He was brought in a critical condition from the Goalpara detention centre, about 140 km west of Guwahati, 10 days ago.
Goalpara is one of six detention centres functioning from central jails in Assam. Together, they house about 1,000 people declared foreigners by 100 Foreigners' Tribunals across the State.
Koch, officials at the detention centre said, was lodged in March 2018 after a tribunal in Goalpara district marked him a foreigner.
“The man suffered a stroke and died in the hospital. He was from the Mornoi area [near Sainik School, Goalpara],” Goalpara's Superintendent of Police Sushanta Biswa Sarma told The Hindu .
‘It’s the poor who suffer’
Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi, who represents the Kaliabor constituency in central Assam, said the death was another example of how the poor bear the brunt of the politics around citizenship. “It is invariably the poor and the marginalised who suffer when forced to show documents to the satisfaction of the administration. And it does not matter which religion you belong to,” he said.
Data provided by the government in the Assembly in November 2019 said 25 declared foreigners died in the detention camps since 2009, when they were established. The government also said 335 such people having served three years in detention were set to be released conditionally, in deference to a Supreme Court order on May 10, 2019.
Most of the declared foreigners were Bengali speakers, both Hindus and Muslims. A few like Koch -- from indigenous communities or settlers from other parts of India -- have been victims of the system too, activists said.
One such person was Amila Shah, a Hindi-speaker, whose father Keshav Prasad Gupta had come from Bihar and settled down in north-central Assam's Sonitpur district during the British rule. Another is Puna Munda, a tea plantation worker, whose family traced their roots to Sekai village in Jharkhand's Gumla district.
“Such cases show the system of declaring foreigners is flawed,” said H.R.A. Choudhury, a senior lawyer.
Case dropped
On December 31, the Foreigners' Tribunal No. 2 in Bongaigaon district dropped a case against one Akbar Ali, who was served a notice by the police for the second time in four years.
Tribunal member Eva Kakoti dropped the case following a plea by the office of the district superintendent of police.
Ali, a farmer, was lodged in the Goalpara detention centre after the same tribunal, on December 31, 2015, declared him a foreigner for “illegally entering” the State after 1971. He was released on bail on November 21, 2019, but was served a notice within a week.
“I don't know why I became a foreigner despite possessing all requisite documents. But I know my case left my family shattered and battling poverty, forcing my children to leave studies,” he said.
