Two Bengali-origin Muslim women from Assam, who were allegedly forced into the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh by the Border Security Force, have returned to their homes.
One of them, Shona Bhanu, a 59-year-old resident of Barpeta district, was dropped on the highway around 11 pm on Saturday, 120 km from her home, her brother Ashraf Ali told Scroll.
The second woman, Rahima Begum, from Upper Assam’s Golaghat district, was brought home by the police on Friday night, her family said. Only three months ago, Begum had got a favourable ruling from the foreigners’ tribunals, her lawyer said.
On Friday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had admitted that Assam has been “pushing” back to Bangladesh persons who have been declared foreigners by the state’s foreigners tribunals.
Foreigner tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to Assam, which rule on citizenship cases. They have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor errors in documents.
As Scroll has reported, at least three of these expelled from Indian territory, including Bhanu, have their cases pending in the Supreme Court.
Neither the Border Security Force nor the Assam police have explained why the two women have returned. Scroll sent questions to BSF and police officials. The story will be updated if they respond.
Case in Supreme Court
Shona Bhanu was among 14 people, including the Morigaon teacher Khairul Islam, who were allegedly forced out of Indian territory on May 27.
She returned home on Saturday night, her brother Ali, said. “I received a call at 11.30 pm that she had been dropped on the highway. I hired a vehicle and brought her home last night.”
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.
‘Caught in a crossfire’
Begum, a 50-year-old resident of Village No 2 Padumoni at Sarupather, told Scroll that she was picked up from her home on the morning of May 25 by the police and taken to the Matia detention centre in Lower Assam’s Goalpara district, 425 km away.
On Tuesday night, Begum told Scroll, those detained along with her were fed khichdi and handed Bangladeshi currency notes. “The [BSF officials] asked me to go to Bangladesh and asked us to admit that we are Bangladeshi,” she said.
Around dawn, they were then separated into groups and “pushed forward”. “We did not have any other option but to listen to them,” she said. “We were pushed across the border by the BSF. As soon as we crossed, villagers on the other side came and asked us where we had come from. The Bangladesh border police came and questioned us and asked us to return the same way. I was also beaten up by the Bangladesh police,” Begum told Scroll.
Begum said she did not know where in Bangladesh she had been forced into.
When they tried to return to the Indian side, Begum said, they were caught in crossfire between the two border forces.
“We were terrified and stayed in an open field in no man’s land the whole day in the scorching heat,” she said.
Around 6 pm, BSF officials brought them water. “Then they asked us to come back to the India border and we were brought to the BSF camp where they gave us food and water. They later asked to return the Bangladeshi money,” Begum said.
An Indian citizen
Begum is a Sylheti Muslim and she and her husband Malek Uddin Choudhury had migrated from Cachar in Barak Valley to Golaghat.
Her advocate Lipika Deb said that Begum was able to satisfy the Jorhat foreigners’ tribunal that her family had entered the state before March 24, 1971 but after January 1, 1966.
Both those dates are crucial to determining citizenship status in Assam, as laid out in Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The section was enacted in 1985 to implement the Assam Accord, signed between Assamese leaders and the Indian government, which put an end to a popular movement against “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh.
The law created two categories of citizens: those who entered Assam before January 1, 1966, and those who arrived between January 1966 and March 24, 1971.
Both were granted citizenship, but the latter group had to register at the foreigners’ regional registration office within 30 days and were denied voting rights for 10 years after being identified as “foreigners”.
“A Jorhat tribunal on March 26 this year ruled that her family came to the territory of Assam between January 1966 and March 24, 1971,” Deb told Scroll. “After that I helped her enroll at the foreigners’ regional registration office on April 8 within 30 days.”
Deb said her family had shown the FRRO order to some officials but they did not “accept it”. “They said it was a fake document,” she said.
Begum’s daughter said her mother is in trauma and questioned the police action. “The government should do an inquiry before harassing people like this. Not a single Indian should go through this.”
