At 3 am on May 24, the police arrived at 42-year-old Manikjan Begum’s home in Assam’s Darrang district.
They took her along, and asked her family to report to the Dhula police station during the day. About 12 hours later, she was let go, after the police verified her documents.
The next day, Begum, who was declared a foreigner by a foreigners’ tribunal in 2018, was summoned to the police station again, her son said. Foreigner tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to Assam, which rule on citizenship cases.
On her second visit to the police station, Begum’s husband accompanied her, along with her eight-month-old daughter.
“From the Dhula police station, she was taken to the police reserve in Mangaldai. She was made to sit there till 1 pm and again taken to the office of the superintendent of police,” said Barek Ali, the 22-year-old eldest son.
Ali claims that the family members last saw her, with her baby, on the afternoon of May 25 at the office of the superintendent of border police. “We waited at the SP’s office till 8 pm, but she did not come out,” he said.
For the next two days, Begum’s family members kept visiting the Dhula police station and Darrang SP’s office. “We kept going back to the police for two days, but they said they did not know where she or her child was,” Ali said.
Darrang superintendent of police Prakash Sonowal told Scroll that he is unaware of Begum’s whereabouts. “The family members will know. Talk to them,” he said, before hanging up.
Begum’s family is not alone. Days after the Assam police’s crackdown on alleged undocumented migrants, several residents from Dhubri, Chirang, Barpeta, Darrang, Morigaon, Kokrajhar, among other districts, have alleged that their family members – declared foreigners by the state’s foreigners’ tribunals – had gone “missing”, after being arrested or detained by the police.
Many fear that their family members have been forced out of Indian territory as part of what the Assam chief minister has described as “push-back” operations. On Tuesday, Scroll had reported that a former teacher from Morigaon district, Khairul Islam, whose citizenship case was still being heard in the Supreme Court, had been picked up from the Matia detention centre and forced out along the Bangladesh border near Assam’s South Salmara district in the early hours of May 27.
On Thursday, the nephew of two men from Kamrup district moved Gauhati High Court, seeking information about his uncles. The two men, Abu Bakkar Siddique and Akbar Ali, were summoned to the Nagarbera police station on May 25. “Since then, the authorities have refused to give details of their whereabouts,” Aman Wadud, one of the advocates representing them in the court, told Scroll.
The petitioner, Torap Ali, said he was “apprehensive that his uncles will be pushed back into Bangladesh, in light of recent reports”. The court has issued a notice to the state government, seeking its response.
Spotted in Bangladesh
On Wednesday, the worst fears of Begum’s family members were confirmed. Her son, Ali, was alerted about a news report from Bangladesh’s Lalmonirhat, a video of which was posted on Facebook.
Citing local residents, the report by DBC News alleged that 13 people – including six women and a baby – had been “pushed into” Bangladesh territory by India’s Border Security Force on the morning of May 28.
The story was filmed at the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh – near the Chawratari border in Bangladesh’s Lalmonirhat, which shares a border with West Bengal.
Ali claimed that he saw his mother standing in a field, with her eight-month-old infant, in the video. “My mother has been taken away across the border. Are they human or animals? ” he said in disbelief.
Mohhammad Ali Akbar, officer in charge of the Aditmari police station in Bangladesh’s Lalmonirhat, told Scroll that 13 people – six men, six women and a baby were pushed in by the BSF on early Wednesday. “I was informed at 7 am that the BSF had [pushed in] 13 people but they are not our citizens. So, they remained in the no man’s land in the afternoon,” Akbar said.
A report in the Bangladesh newspaper, The Daily Star, on May 28 said “all 13 individuals remained stranded at the zero line – unable to cross into Bangladesh and denied re-entry into India”.
“They said they were from Darrang district,” the report added.
A commanding officer of the Border Guard Bangladesh told another Bangladesh news outlet, The Financial Express, that “they have told the BSF that the 13 people are not Bangladeshi citizens”. “It's very inhumane trying to push in people at [sic] dead of night," Lt Colonel Mehedi Imam, was quoted as saying.
Scroll emailed the BSF spokesperson for a response to the news reports. The story will be updated if they respond.
“How can my mother be a Bangladeshi?” asked Ali. “All her sisters and family members are Indians. She has been voting here for years.”
Begum was declared a “foreigner from Bangladesh” on February 22, 2018 by a foreigners’ tribunal in Darrang in an ex parte order – a ruling pronounced in her absence – after she and her lawyer did not appear before the tribunal.
Foreigner tribunals have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.
In 2019, all of Begum’s family members, barring her, made it to the National Register of Citizens, a list of Indian citizens in Assam, compiled after several rounds of documentary and physical verification.
Similarly, the family members of Shona Bhanu, a 59-year-old resident of Barpeta, claim that they have seen her in videos from Kurigram district in Bangladesh.
They allege that she was among the 14 people, including the teacher Khairul Islam, who were forced out of Indian territory on May 27. “We saw her in the video of the 14 people who were stranded in no man’s land,” her brother Ashraf Ali said. “Later, there was another video where she was seen walking with Bangladeshi police.”
Bhanu had been summoned to the Barpeta SP’s office on May 25, from where she was taken to the Matia detention centre.
Bhanu had been declared a foreigner in 2013 by the foreigners’ tribunal in Barpeta. The decision was upheld by the Gauhati High Court in 2016.
However, in 2018, the Supreme Court stayed the high court’s order, Guwahati-based advocate Sauradeep Dey, who was associated with her challenge to the tribunal ruling, told Scroll. “The stay will automatically apply till the end of the case,” he said.
“How can they send her to Bangladesh when the case is still pending?” Ali told Scroll. “Our parents are Indian. We are Indian. How come she became a foreigner?”
‘Midnight arrest’
On May 24, Manowara Bewa, a 51-year-old woman from Dhubri district, was called to the Gauripur police station “on a false pretext of making a statement”, her lawyer Aman Wadud said.
Bewa had been declared a foreigner in March, 2016 by a foreigners’ tribunal, and its order was upheld by the Gauhati High Court in February, 2017.
She spent three years in detention and was subsequently released on the basis of a 2019 Supreme Court directive, allowing bail to declared foreigners imprisoned for more than three years. Her case is now pending at the Supreme Court, as per the court records seen by Scroll.
From the police station, Bewa was taken to the office of the superintendent of border police, Dhubri, at midnight, said Wadud.
“She obviously trusted the police, but they misused that trust to completely make her vanish,” he alleged.
Since then, Bewa’s 27-year- old son and other family members have been regularly visiting the SP’s office, but have received no answers about her whereabouts, Wadud said. “The state is behaving like non-state rogue actors.”
Scroll called and texted the Dhubri SP, seeking a response to the charges. Scroll also sent questions to the director-general of Assam Police and Assam chief secretary. The story will be updated if they respond.
On May 27, Wadud sent a contempt notice to the Dhubri superintendent of police (border), asking them to ensure strict compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions, which formed the basis of the bail granted to Bewa by the Gauhati High Court in 2020. “Should there be any transgression or non-compliance with the said order, I shall be compelled to initiate appropriate legal proceedings, including but not limited to, invoking the contempt jurisdiction of the Supreme Court at your cost and risk,” the letter, which Scroll has seen, said.
‘Absolute panic’
Since the drive to re-arrest declared foreigners started on Saturday, anxious families have tried and failed to make contact with their relatives.
Amin Hussain, a resident of Dhubri town, went to the Matia detention centre on Monday to meet his 36-year-brother, Aminur Ali, but was turned away. Ali, a declared foreigner out on bail on a Gauhati High Court order, was detained on Saturday evening by the Dhubri border police.
“They did not allow me to meet him,” Hussain told Scroll.
Hussain said they belong to the Deshi community, a group designated by the Bharatiya Janata Party government as indigenous to Assam.
Zamsher Ali, a journalist-turned politician who has worked on citizenship issues over the years, alleged that at least five declared foreigners from Chirang district have similarly gone missing. They had been picked up from their homes and detained by the police on May 25. “Their family members visited the Matia detention camp but came away without any update. The district administration is also not taking responsibility,” Ali, who visited their homes, told Scroll.
Dildar Hussain, a Barpeta-based lawyer, told Scroll that at least 10 people, who are out on bail from the courts in citizenship trials, have contacted him, fearing that they might be picked up and forced out of India.
“People are terrified because the police are picking up people even when their cases are pending in courts, without verifying their status,” Hussian said. “There is absolute panic. Many have fled their homes.”
At least five persons in Barpeta told Scroll that they fear for their relatives, who are designated D-voters, and have asked them to stay away from their homes.
Like foreigners’ tribunals, D-voter is a category unique to Assam. It was created in 1997, when the Election Commission of India carried out an “intensive revision” of the state’s electoral rolls and termed 3.13 lakh voters as “doubtful” or D-voters.
“We fear that the police will come to pick up my mother,” said a 28-year-old Barpeta-based pharmacist, whose mother is a D-voter. “Four people were picked up from their homes on Thursday night in our area. The lawyers have advised my mother to stay away from home.”
