GUWAHATI: Even as a recent survey conducted by a human rights organisation said people excluded from National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam were suffering from trauma and humiliation, nine declared foreigners have been released on conditions from the Goalpara detention camp.
Government officials and the police confirmed their release but refused to divulge their names, ostensibly for security reasons. Five of them are Hindus while the remaining four are Muslims.
They were among 335 declared foreigners who spent at least three years in detention. A total of 1,145 declared foreigners are lodged in Assam’s various detention camps which are separate cells in the conventional jails.
Goalpara Superintendent of Police, Sushanta Biswa Sarma, told this newspaper that the police had no role in the four persons’ release. He said they were granted bail by the court of Foreigners’ Tribunal.
Last year, a 102-year-old declared foreigner was released from a detention camp in Barak Valley on health and humanitarian ground. The nine people released in Goalpara are the first to walk to freedom since the state government took a decision on the conditional release of declared foreigners who have already spent at least three years in detention.
The conditions include payment of two sureties of Rs.1 lakh each, submission of a verifiable address, collection of biometrics which include all ten fingerprints besides iris. Another condition is that the persons must report to the police station every week.
In May, the state government had proposed to the Supreme Court for the conditional release of the declared foreigners. After the SC did not object to it, the government approached the Centre seeking amendment to the Foreigners’ (Tribunals) Order, 1964 but the Centre informed there was no need to amend the order, thereby clearing the decks for the release of the detainees.
The final NRC will be published on August 31.