SILCHAR: Nine persons, including five children, were detained by the Cachar district police in Assam on charges that they were foreign nationals who had illegally entered the country via Bangladesh.
Cachar senior superintendent of police (SSP) Numal Mahatta stated that the detainees were apprehended from the Katigorah area on Tuesday evening following a tip-off.
“They have been staying in India for many years. Recently, they travelled here with the intention of living in this area. They did not attempt to cross the border, but our team intercepted them before they could settle here,” Mahatta said.
Police officers said they were suspected of being members of the Rohingya community of Myanmar, and had entered the country via Bangladesh nearly 13 years ago.
The group, comprising two men, two women, a teenage girl, and four children, had been living in different parts of India. They arrived at the Hilara railway station on Monday from Hyderabad, but were spotted by locals residents in Katigorah.
Some of them told the police that they became suspicious when they heard the unfamiliar group speak in a language that appeared similar to the Rohingya language.
{{/usCountry}}Some of them told the police that they became suspicious when they heard the unfamiliar group speak in a language that appeared similar to the Rohingya language.
{{/usCountry}}The detainees allegedly told police they entered India from Bangladesh nearly 13 years ago and had worked in states including Jammu & Kashmir and Telangana.
One of them, Abu Bakkar Siddiqui, said that while they were originally from Myanmar, their family had shifted to Bangladesh. Siddiqui said they had decided to return in view of the recent crackdown on migrant workers.
Another detainee, Samsur Alam, claimed they were helped by a human trafficking network that brought them to Assam. “We were told not to go out during the day, but we went to the market as we had no food,” he said.