Silchar/Barpeta/Guwahati (Assam): Forty-odd people in one room, one toilet to be shared among them, one square foot space for each to sleep in, locked up inside from late afternoon till the next morning, with measly meals and poor medical facilities.
That’s what life in an Assam detention centre is like. This is where those declared “foreigners” are lodged for months on end as their anxious families wait outside on tenterhooks.
“There were little girls in the camp too. I felt so sad looking at them,” says Sofiya Khatun, a 60-year-old who spent a year at one of Assam’s six detention camps before a Supreme Court order got her out.
“They are allowed to go to school in a police vehicle, accompanied by a policewoman,” she tells ThePrint. “However, once they turn 12, they are stopped from going to school.”
The facts and figures
The fault lines between the ethnic Assamese and the ‘outsider’ run deep in the state, spanning decades, and are the force behind the ongoing updation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is aimed at identifying those who immigrated ‘illegally’ from Bangladesh after 1971.
In the midst of a frenzied general election, heated up further by the NRC and the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, there is one thing Assam forgets — the anxieties and aspirations of those in detention centres and their families.
Assam, a state that has long grappled with the socially- and politically-delicate issue of ‘outsiders’, has six detention centres — in Goalpara, Silchar, Kokrajhar, Tezpur, Jorhat and Dibrugarh — all located inside prisons and meant to accommodate those identified as foreigners.
According to government data up to 31 January this year, presented in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, there are as many as 938 detainees lodged in these centres. The highest number of detainees are in the Tezpur centre, 287, followed by Goalpara, which has 208.
In terms of the break-up, the number of Muslim detainees has been on the rise and, according to some estimates, now surpasses Hindus by a ratio of almost 65:35, if not more.
Of the 938, 823 have been declared “foreigners” while 115 “convicts” await deportation. Another 166 have been repatriated since 31 March 2013.
Essentially, those in the ‘convicted’ category are people found guilty under the Passport Act or a section of the Indian Penal Code. Their country of origin is known and, hence, specified.
For the ones who have been declared foreigners, the process has its own course.
Once the authorities find their documents lacking, they are referred to the Foreigners Tribunal. If the tribunal declares them foreigners, they are taken to the detention centre closest to where they reside.
They can then file writ petitions in courts asking to be released.
The people rounded up thus are essentially those who have been identified as D-Voters or ‘doubtful voters’ during electoral roll revisions. In Assam, the first such exercise was conducted in 1997, when 2,20,209 D-Voters were found.
Most of them, however, have been in Assam for decades and know the state as their only home.
While they do have the option to seek legal remedy, the harrowing experience of living in these detention centres is exacting a heavy toll on the inmates, leaving them with scars that haunt them long after their release.
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‘If we die in these camps, we become Indians’
Joynal Abedin, 55, was released from the detention centre at Goalpara on the order of the Gauhati High Court on 28 December last year, after he spent nearly 14 months there.
A resident of Kathajhar Patha village of Barpeta district, he lives in a kutcha house too small for his family of eight — his wife, four sons and two daughters.
Abedin best represents the paradox of the situation.
He has been declared a foreigner and spent a stint at a detention centre, but his name appears in the NRC. In fact, all his family members found their names in the first NRC draft.
This, of course, is just the draft NRC list and the final is yet to be out.
Abedin was listed as a D-Voter in the 1997 electoral roll revision and was served notice a year before he was finally arrested. His family challenged the notice legally, but Abedin was arrested in October 2017 and sent to the Goalpara centre.
“They called me to the police station. They said I should appear before them once,” Abedin tells ThePrint.
“They kept calling me up repeatedly, asking me to come soon, even while I was on my way. After I reached, they made me sit for 10 minutes and took me to Barpeta. There, they took my biometrics, did my medical examination and took me to the Goalpara detention camp and put me inside jail. I was taken in a police vehicle,” he adds.
Abedin claims he was not allowed to talk to his family, and was only able to meet them after 15-odd days, when they managed to borrow money for a visit to Goalpara.
According to Abedin, he was born in Dhubri and lived there until 20 years ago, when he came to Guwahati. It was around six years ago that he moved to Barpeta. For his NRC application, he gave legacy documents of 1951, 1966 and 1971. None of his family members have voter IDs now.
“I had all my documents. Still, they said I am not an Indian. This is my birthplace,” he says.
The 14-odd months in the detention centre turned out to be tormenting.
“When I was at the centre, it had 212 inmates. We were all kept in tiny rooms, with 40-50 people in each room,” he adds.
“There was just one toilet and one bathroom for each room. The toilet was inside the room and made living there even more unbearable. We had to sleep on the floor but were given blankets,” he says.
Meals included milk tea without sugar with one roti at 6 am, rice with dal and a vegetable preparation at 10 am, and an early dinner at 4pm, after which they would be locked up inside their rooms till the next morning.
“When outside [the centre], you can eat nice things,” he says. “But there, how can you keep eating the same food everyday? One can’t live on the food the government gives. We were not given our rights there,” Abedin adds.
He claims the medical facilities there were lacking and the “doctor’s medicines cured nobody”.
“So many people died while I was inside,” he says. “When people there die, they become Indian. If they live, they are termed foreigners.”
The months after his release were no vacation either, says Abedin.
A daily-wager, Abedin would also pull a cycle rickshaw before his arrest. However, jail meant a loss of livelihood and a sea of loans to fight the case.
“I just wasted three months looking for something after being released. I borrowed money to pay the lawyer. Now, I have found some odd jobs,” he tells ThePrint.
“I had to take my daughter out of school because I couldn’t pay her fees. I am not able to give anything to my children now. I am in a lot of anguish,” he adds.
“My lawyer said we have to go back to the high court. He says I need to give Rs 25,000. Where will I find that kind of money?” he asks, adding that he has got benefits of no government schemes and even his ration card has now been deactivated.
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‘I was in a complete daze’
Sofiya Khatun is a resident of Bogorighuri village in Barpeta. Arrested on 5 October 2016, she was released on the Supreme Court’s orders on 12 September last year.
Khatun says her name appeared as a D-Voter in 1997 as well, but she did nothing about it, confused all the same as to why she would have been identified as such. In 2015, she was served a notice and, a year later, arrested.
“I was asked to come to court and then, suddenly, they said ‘you are a foreigner, so you will go to jail,” she tells ThePrint.
“Two women police officers took me for my biometrics and medical test. They asked me to tell the doctor I am fine, so I did that. They didn’t allow me to meet anyone or pack my clothes. I was taken to the Kokrajhar centre,” Khatun recalls.
“I was in a complete daze. I just couldn’t register what was happening,” she adds.
Her son Safiul Islam says someone called them up to inform what had happened, after which the family borrowed money and made arrangements to go see her.
“At the centre, I found her dazed. Like she didn’t know what was happening. I took her some clothes and food,” he adds.
As she talks about her experience at the detention centre, Khatun’s eyes well up.
“We were 180 people in the camp overall and, in my room, 30-odd of us. There was one bathroom and one toilet inside for all of us, which were kept locked till someone asked to use them,” she says.
“We were made to sleep on the floor, curled up in a space of about one square foot for each person,” she adds.
The menu and timings were the same as that in the Goalpara centre and, much like Abedin, Khatun also had trouble eating the food. She says the medical facilities were poor and the doctor’s medicines didn’t help.
Her son had to carry medicines for her when she fell sick and developed a swelling in her arms and feet.
“We had just four handpumps for drinking water — and that was shared by not just us in the detention camp, but the entire prison,” she says, adding that there was no interaction between them and the regular jail inmates.
For the NRC, she says, she gave legacy documents since 1951 onwards but her name hasn’t appeared in the list, with two of her sons’ names missing too. However, her husband and Safiul’s names are on the list.
She may be out now, but the trauma is not yet over. Currently, her case is in the Supreme Court and she has to report to the local police station on the last day of every month.
“My mother hasn’t recovered since she came back. You may be as strong as possible, but even then, the camp breaks you,” Safiul says.
The family mortgaged some land, sold off their cattle and trees to fight the case. In the two years that she was in prison, her family went to meet her a few times but it was expensive to do so. Safiul claims they also had to bribe the prison guard each time.
Khatun’s children say they have voter cards and will vote in the ongoing polls.
“We are Indians. We are born here. Why do we need to prove it? We have all the documents too,” says Saiful.
“All we want is that whoever comes to power, there should be peace in the country and things like D-Voter should not be there. Nobody should suffer like my mother has,” he adds.
‘All we keep thinking is how to bring her back’
Abedin and Khatun may have been released for now, but not everyone is as fortunate. Sukekha Das, 60, of Taligram in Silchar has been at a detention camp since April last year — a year and counting.
As she struggles inside, her family is waging their own battle outside. They are pursuing the case legally but claim their lawyer is now keeping them in the dark about what is happening.
Das was also tagged a D-Voter in 1997, but her family claims she got no notice. According to Das’ relatives, her husband’s family moved to Assam from Bangladesh during the 1971 war and stayed in a refugee camp in Meghalaya.
After they got a refugee card, they moved to Karimganj and later Silchar town, before shifting to Taligram. Das, however, claims that her family moved to India before 1971, and lived in Karimganj.
It is when they tried to shift their names to the voter list in their current place of residence around five years ago, she says, that they realised Das had been labelled a D-Voter.
They have been fighting the case legally since, but weren’t able to prevent her arrest, which they say caught them off-guard.
“They told her to come to the police station and said it was for NRC. Then they just told her she was being arrested and put her in the Silchar detention centre,” says her daughter Baby Das. “We didn’t even know what was happening.”
The grounds against her, according to the legal documents, are that she failed to establish “her place of birth at Ratabari, Karimganj, and could not substantiate her year of birth”.
The rest of her family has valid voters IDs, ration cards and some even find their names in the NRC draft.
Given that she is lodged in Silchar itself, her family is able to meet her once a week.
“When we meet her, she keeps crying. She has cried so much that she has now developed an eye issue. She also has high blood pressure,” says Baby.
Describing her ordeal, Baby says she has to sleep on the floor despite joint pains, is holed up in a room with 40 other inmates with one bathroom to share, and because of water shortage, is able to bathe only once in three days.
“Even a murderer gets bail more easily,” Das’ brother-in-law, Manoranjan Das, says, visibly agitated. “We have our names in the voters list but we don’t want to vote. We are frustrated with the system.”
Her family’s only focus at this point is to get her released. “All that we hope for, and all that we are thinking of is how to get her out,” Baby says.
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Cases — genuine or not?
Talking to ThePrint, Guwahati-based lawyer Aman Wadud said the Foreigners Tribunal declared people foreigners based on “hyper technical grounds”.
“All these people have documents, it is just about how they are appreciated,” he adds.
“My experience is that these people declared foreigners are very much Indians. The government is unable to detect and prosecute those who are actually illegal immigrants,” he says.
While they refer to a detainee’s release as having been “granted bail”, Wadud said the release technically wasn’t bail, since no crime was ever committed.
The lawyers of these detainees file a petition in court, asking to be released. If the court finds enough reason to believe their documents are satisfactory, they are released on the condition of appearing before authorities at intervals, but their case continues.
Meanwhile, activist Harsh Mander has filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court on the issue, following which the court has asked the centre to provide details of the centres and detainees.
