GUWAHATI/NEW DELHI: In a first, India on Thursday deported seven Rohingya to Myanmar. However, for reasons not known, the authorities refused to call them Rohingya.
“The deportation took place at 1:30 pm in the presence of Myanmarese authorities and Cachar Police,” Manipur’s Tengnoupal Superintendent of Police, Ibomcha Singh, told TNIE.The deportation came hours after the Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi refused to intervene in a plea made by Mohammed Salimullah, through advocate Prashant Bhushan, that a United Nations (UN) officer must be allowed to first talk to the seven Rohingya.
On October 2, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’, who was in Delhi for the 150th birth centenary of Mahatma Gandhi, told a television channel: “We appeal to India first of all to receive Rohingya refugees fleeing, and second, not to send refugees back to their countries of origin, where they might still face persecution against their will.”
Md Inus, Md Sabir Ahmed, Md Jamal, Md Salam, Md Mukbul Khan, Md Rohimuddin and Md Jamal Hussain, all from Faida district of Myanmar, were arrested in southern Assam’s Cachar district in 2012 and lodged at the Central Jail in Cachar district headquarters Silchar since then.
On Wednesday, they were taken to Manipur by road and they spent the night in Imphal. From there, they were taken to the India-Myanmar border town of Moreh on Thursday and deported.
SC dismisses plea against deportation
All of them were given travel documents by Myanmar. Earlier, consular access had been given to Myanmarese authorities who confirmed the identity of the immigrants.Asked if the persons were Rohingya, he said, “When SP Cachar and Assam’s Additional Director General of Police (Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta) communicated it to our DGP, they were not mentioned as Rohingya but Myanmarese nationals. There are many Muslims settled in different areas of Myanmar, not Rakhine alone”.
Cachar Deputy Commissioner, Dr S Lakshmana, too, said the seven persons deported were “Myanmarese nationals”. He refused to confirm if they were Rohingya or not.Earlier in Delhi, Prashant Bhushan argued before the SC that the men were among thousands who had fled mass killings, unimaginable torture and persecution in Myanmar, and that it was the constitutional responsibility of the court to protect life.
Dismissing the plea, the court said: “The government is saying most of them are illegal and the country of origin has accepted them. You (Bhushan) don’t have to remind us of our responsibility... we are aware of it.”
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