GUWAHATI: A Rohingya from Myanmar has been arrested in Assam 12 years after he had infiltrated into India.
Alam Hussain Mazumder (45) was arrested from the house of his in-laws at Bhagadar Betukandi village in Cachar district of Southern Assam’s Barak Valley by a joint team of the police and Assam Rifles.
The locals claimed his name had figured in the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC authorities rubbished the claim.
Interestingly, Mazumder possessed various documents such as Pan Card, Aadhaar, bank passbook, voter ID card etc. He told the police that his in-laws had helped him obtain the documents by shelling out money. His father-in-law Ajijur Rahman Laskar has gone into hiding ever since the arrest.
Mazumder was produced in a court which sent him to seven days’ police custody. The police said they were probing the case.
Mazumder said he had infiltrated into India from Bangladesh 12 years ago through the Karimganj border in Barak Valley. He started living at the house of Laskar ever since getting married to the latter’s daughter Resna Begum. The couple has two children.
Mazumder, who practised exorcism, had all along concealed his identity before everyone.
Groups and organisations in Assam have been for long demanding the sealing of the India-Bangladesh border. The Rohingya refugees often use the Tripura and Barak Valley corridors to sneak into India from Bangladesh. Over the past few months, several of them were arrested in the two states.
Given the illegal influx, the Centre earlier sent an advisory to the BSF and the states in the Northeast to be on a high alert.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims had fled to Bangladesh two years ago in the wake of a crackdown against them by the military of Myanmar. They have been lodged in relief camps set up by the Bangladesh government in the country’s Cox Bazar area.