Allegations of sending 40 Bengali-speaking Muslims to detention camps in India The incident took place in the north-eastern state of Assam, India. In the last one month, three times the residents of Barpeta district have been identified as foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunal of the state. A video of the time when the men and women were taken to the transit camp in Goalpara in a bus with tight security, has spread on social media.
In the video that has spread, it is seen that as the families of the identified foreigners are crying, the identified foreigners sitting inside the bus are also crying. Some of the relatives are lying on the street and crying.
There are nine women among them. At least one of the detainees was found whose family claims his name is on the final list of the National Register of Citizens, meaning that he is a citizen of India, recognized by the Indian government after going through a complicated process.
Activists say 22 people were summoned to the police station on August 8-9 and another 28 on September 2 and taken into custody. They were produced before the Foreign Identification Tribunal of Assam. Later they were all taken to the transit camp for identified foreigners at Matia in Goalpara.
Barpeta Additional Superintendent of Police Vidyut Vikas Bara Bhuiyan told news agency ANI that the District Border Police on Monday arrested 28 identified foreigners living in different police stations of Barpeta. They were arrested only after they were identified as foreigners on the orders of the foreign tribunal. Among them there are nine women and 19 men. After all the formalities, they were sent to Goalpara camp. Last month too, 22 identified foreigners were detained.
Nurjahan Khatun, a resident of Dimapur village, was telling the media that the police station had asked to meet and sign some documents. Accordingly, my husband went to the police station. But from there he was sent to the office of the Superintendent of Police, after which he was arrested and sent to the tribunal.
Activist Farooq Khan said, “We checked all the documents and found that a report was given from the police station in 2004 that Jahedul Islam had come from Bangladesh.” On that basis he needed to go to the tribunal and fight the case but his argument was that why fight the false accusation case, why prove it despite being an Indian!
Initially, several hundred thousand D-voters were identified, but the number of signatures gradually decreased. Recently, the Assam government informed the state assembly that there are currently 1 lakh 19 thousand 570 D-voters. On the other hand, after being identified as a D-voter, a person has to go to a foreign tribunal to prove himself as an Indian.
These tribunals are quasi-judicial and adjudication is conducted by the members of the tribunal, who are not actually judges. Government of Assam appoints them on contract basis. About a hundred such tribunals function throughout Assam.