After several years in detention, nine 'foreigners' freed

GUWAHATI: Five days before the publication of the final NRC, Assam government freed nine 'foreigners' from a detention camp in Goalpara district on Monday. They were among the 335 'declared foreigners' who have spent at least three years in detention.

This comes in response to a recent Supreme Court directive asking for the release of foreigners who have completed more than three years in detention centres.

The nine were identified as Nur Mohammad, Robi Dey, Sujit Sarkar, Md Rahim Ali, Batchu Ali, Shyamal Ghosh, Sudhan Sarkar, Md Sonaullah and Aruna Das. Of them, Nur Mohammad (65) had spent almost nine years in detention.

"They were released after their biometric details were registered in a secured database," a police source in Goalpara said. In May, the SC, while admitting a petition filed by the state government, had ordered the release of the detainees.

The detainees will have to report to the local police station once every week and notify any change of address immediately. The SP (border) will send a quarterly report to the home and political departments on the visits of the foreigners to the police stations concerned.

There are altogether 938 such people in detention centres located in Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Silchar,

Dibrugarh

,

Jorhat

and

Tezpur

.