Agartala, May 3 (IANS): At least 24 Rohingyas including 10 children and 8 women, coming from Jammu, were detained in Tripura’s Unakoti district but subsequently released as they are holding UNHCR cards, the police said on Tuesday.
Unakoti district superintendent police Kishore Debbarma said that the Border Security Force personnel detained the Rohingyas travelling in three cars at Jiturdighipar check-gate on Monday evening.
Later, the BSF handed over the 24 Rohingyas to police, who after verification of their UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees) cards on Tuesday released them.
“The Rohingyas came to Kumarghat railway station by training via Kolkata and Guwahati from their refugee camp in Jammu. We can not arrest them as they have valid UNHCR cards,” Debbarma told IANS over phone.
The foreign nationals have no specific plan where they ultimately would go. Intelligence officials suspect that they are likely to go to Bangladesh and that’s why they came to bordering Kailashahar. On April 27, six Rohingya migrants, including one holding a UNHCR card, were held at Dharmanagar railway station in North Tripura district. Rohingya Muslims often enter the northeastern states illegally from Bangladesh in search of jobs and for other purposes.
During the past two years, over 200 Rohingyas, who are citizens of Myanmar, have been detained in different northeastern states by the Border Security Force and other security agencies.
Since 2016, over 860,000 Rohingyas fled from Myanmar to evade violence and sheltered in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh.
