A 40-year-old Assam woman, who has her roots in Bihar, was declared a “foreigner” by the Foreigners’ Tribunal and sent to a detention camp for the illegal immigrants.
According to NDTV, the woman identified as Amila Sah was arrested on June 15 and sent to the Tezpur detention camp in northern Assam’s Sonitpur district. Her family wondered how a Bihari woman could be an illegal immigrant. Her family claims her father was born in Bihar and they have been living in Assam since the British era. Amila was the daughter of Keshab Prashad Gupta, who was born in Nalanda in Bihar and had moved to Pratapgarh Tea Estate in Assam in 1948. But, the names of Sah's family members, including her siblings, have been added to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft.
Sah's brother, Ramesh Gupta told NDTV, "On 15 June, she was sent to the detention centre. We are genuine Indians. We are Hindi speaking people living in Assam with roots from Bihar. Our father had migrated from Bihar. We are poor and less literate so would document keeping is patchy but that does not mean we are not Indian. Our names have come in draft NRC list." He further added that his sister had submitted various documents such as her PAN card, school and birth certificates besides a document showing their father’s name in the NRC of 1951.
The family now plans to contest the decision of the Foreigners' Tribunal at the Gauhati High Court. Her son Bhola Sah told NDTV, "It's not the question of NRC. NRC is to detect illegal migrants from a foreign land. We are migrants from mainland India, from Bihar, how can my mother be a foreigner."
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) for a state is the list of Indians citizens of that state. For Assam, it was first prepared following the 1951 census and legacy data contained in it extends till the electoral roll as of March 1971. The NRC exercise is aimed at identifying illegal immigrants in the state that borders Bangladesh.
