The Border wing of the Assam police have begun releasing the “declared foreigners” who completed two years to decongest six detention centres for preventing the spread of the COVID-19 infection.
The Gauhati High Court had on April 15 set the Border wing a seven-day deadline for the conditional release of the declared foreigners (DFs), according to the order of the Supreme Court on April 13. This wing deals with detection, detention and deportation of people found to be non-citizens.
The deadline ended on Tuesday but officials said the process involving a lot of paperwork may take some more time for the rest of the DFs eligible for release.
The apex court had modified its May 10, 2019 order to reduce the detention period of the DFs from three to two years and release them with two sureties of ₹5,000 each instead of ₹1 lakh each. Other conditions, such as recording the biometrics of the iris and fingerprints and periodic reporting by the released DF at the nearest police station, were unchanged.
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The Border police officials declined to say how many DFs had been released but insisted they would be reaching their homes soon. Officials at the six detention centres — Dibrugarh, Goalpara, Jorhat, Kokrajhar, Silchar and Tezpur — said at least 80 of 802 detainees had been released so far.
Union Minister of State for Home Nityananda Rai had provided the number of the DFs in the Rajya Sabha on March 11.
“We shall be submitting the information to the High Court as per their direction,” Special DGP (Border) Mukesh Agrawal told The Hindu.
The court had given the Border police 10 days to submit the action taken report.
“The local administration is helping the DFs and their kin in the release process. Transportation for them is also being arranged because of the lockdown,” said Dasarath Das, IGP, Prisons.
One of the DFs set free on Tuesday was Asgar Ali, a carpenter born in Kolkata’s Park Circus and working in Guwahati since the 1980s. He was sent to the detention centre on July 14, 2017 after a Foreigners’ Tribunal declared him a non-citizen.
