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GUWAHATI, MAY 30: The Assam government has been directed by the Gauhati High Court to furnish particular details about the location of two brothers who had been declared foreigners by a tribunal. The court also sought an explanation into the purported arbitrary arrests of declared foreigners, especially those under threat of being illegally pushed back into Bangladesh.
On Thursday, a Division Bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Malasri Nandi ordered the state government to provide information about Abu Bakkar Siddik and his brother Akbar Ali. The duo was said to have been picked up by Nagarbera police station officers in Kamrup district on May 25. The family has yet to hear about their whereabouts or status after repeated appeals, ever since they were taken into custody.
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The court was considering a writ petition by Torap Ali, the two brothers’ nephew. He raised serious doubts about his uncles being at risk of illegal deportation to Bangladesh. The police, the petition alleged, have maintained silence regarding the whereabouts of the brothers, suspecting an illegal pushback.
In the course of the court hearing, the state counsel J. Payeng told the bench that Siddik and Ali were detained and are presently in the custody of the Assam Border Police.
The brothers were initially deported to a detention camp in Goalpara in the year 2017 after the Foreigners Tribunal declared them foreigners. This conclusion was drawn on the grounds of failure to produce documents establishing that they or their forebears had entered India prior to March 24, 1971 — the deadline drawn under the 1985 Assam Accord. They were released on bail in 2020, by a Supreme Court decision permitting release for detainees who had been in detention for more than two years.
The petitioner also contended that the two men were not accorded an opportunity to exhaust all legal remedies the Indian law provides. He asserted that proceeding against them for deportation before their legal rights are exhausted amounts to an arbitrary denial of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Foreigners Tribunals, quasi-judicial institutions established under the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order of 1964, have the responsibility to decide whether a person is a foreigner under the Foreigners Act of 1946. Although prevalent all over India, these tribunals are primarily active in Assam in terms of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and associated citizenship matters. There are 100 such tribunals currently active in the state.
The next hearing date on the case is set on June 4.
