GUWAHATI: Rohingyas of Myanmar’s Rakhine Province, lodged in refugee camps in Bangladesh, are increasingly using the soil of West Bengal to infiltrate into India.
This came to light following the arrest of eight Rohingyas in Manipur on Monday. The police said four of them were found to be in possession of fake Aadhaar cards.
One Md. Ayub, a Bangladeshi agent, had helped the immigrants to cross over to West Bengal. Ayub’s wife Sultana is a local in Imphal, and he made arrangements for the immigrants’ stay in Manipur by contacting her.
Younus and Anwar, two of the arrested Rohingyas, landed up in Manipur last week. After leaving Myanmar three years ago, they were briefly lodged at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. From there, they infiltrated into West Bengal. Later, they visited Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and finally went to Imphal.
Md. Ismail, a native of Rakhine Province, had fled to Bangladesh last year in the wake of the violence against the Rohingyas in Myanmar. He made his way into West Bengal along with four minors with the help of a Bangladeshi agent. Later, they travelled up to Guwahati by train and from there went to Imphal by road.
Manipur’s Director General of Police, LM Khaute, told The New Indian Express that they were alive to the situation.
“We undertook a series of drives in the past several months to detect the immigrants. They bore fruits as we managed to arrest a few of them from the India-Myanmar border town of Moreh, Tengnoupal and Imphal,” he said.
He also said that the police were examining local collusion in the preparation of fake Aadhaar cards. Last week, nine immigrants were arrested from two places of Manipur. Some of them were carrying fake Aadhaar cards, prepared by two local elements. The police had arrested the duo.
Over the past six months or so, a number of immigrants of Myanmar and Bangladesh were arrested in Manipur, prompting the state’s BJP-led government to put in place several measures to detect the infiltrators. Sensing the gravity of the problem, Chief Minister N Biren Singh said it was of utmost importance for the state government to verify all non-locals settled in the state.