GUWAHATI: A centenarian in Assam died, virtually stateless.
Declared a “foreigner” by a Foreigners’ Tribunal, Chandradhar Das (104) wished to die as an “Indian”. It was not fulfilled.
According to his family sources, he had been unwell for the past few months and was not eating food properly.
In January 2018, Das was declared a foreigner ex-parte after he had failed to appear before the tribunal and sent to the detention centre for illegal immigrants at the Central Jail, Silchar in southern Assam’s Cachar district. Three months later, however, he had walked to freedom after being granted bail.
“He was frail and bed-ridden over the past few months. He had one last wish -- he wanted to die as an Indian,” Das’s daughter Niyati said.
Then in his late nineties, Das had applied for the inclusion of his name in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) based on a refugee registration certificate issued by the Tripura government in 1956 but he was not included. His three children and grandchildren also missed the NRC bus, ostensibly for being the descendants of a declared foreigner.
“His 1956 refugee registration certificate was sent to Tripura government for verification but the report never came,” Das’s counsel Suman Chowdhury told this newspaper.
He said he had filed a petition in the tribunal against the ex-parte judgment stating that the centenarian was not given a proper opportunity to prove his citizenship.
“Considering his age, the court had set aside the ex-parte judgment and given him a chance to prove his Indian citizenship,” Chowdhury said, adding, “Earlier, an advocate had appeared three/four times before the tribunal on his (Das’s) behalf. He said Das could not depose due to ill health. But on the day of hearing of the case, the court had declared him a foreigner ex-parte”.
According to the refugee registration certificate, Das was born in Comilla in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
The NRC of 1951 in Assam was updated in deference to the historic Assam Accord – signed between the Rajiv Gandhi government and the All Assam Students’ Union in 1985 at the end of six-year-long bloody Assam Agitation – and under the direct monitoring of the Supreme Court. As per the accord, the immigrants, who entered Assam after March 24 (midnight), 1971 have to be detected and deported.
Over 19.06 lakh people were excluded from the NRC, the supplementary list of which was published on August 31 last year. The final NRC will be published by the Registrar General of India.