The Gauhati High Court has given the border wing of the Assam police seven days to comply with its April 15 order to release on bail ‘declared foreigners’ (DFs) who have completed two years in detention camps.
The court, hearing a petition on Wednesday with reference to the Supreme Court’s April 13 order for releasing the DFs in view of the global coronavirus outbreak, also asked the Special Director-General of Police (Border) to submit the number of people released when the matter is taken up after 10 days.
The border wing is tasked with detection of suspected “illegal immigrants” and refer them to any of the 100 existing quasi-judicial Foreigners’ Tribunals that decide on the status of the person detected, in order to be sent to a detention centre. Assam has six detention centres.
Justices Ajit Barthakur and Manojit Bhuyan observed that the apex court had modified its May 10, 2019, order to reduce the detention period of DFs from three to two years and release them with two sureties of ₹5,000 each instead of ₹1 lakh each.
The apex court’s order was for decongesting prisons, correctional homes, detention centres and protection homes toward preventing the virus from spreading.
“...we are now make a general direction for compliance by the respective Superintendents of Police (Border) of all the present 33 districts...,” the Bench said in the order, asking them to first take stock of the names and period of detention of the detainees and ensuring their release on bail after meeting the conditions.
The conditions include capturing and storing the biometrics of the iris of both eyes and all 10 fingerprints, declaration that a detainee shall report once a week to the police station or outpost within his or her verifiable address of stay after release and an undertaking that the detainee would be liable to be caught again and tried in a tribunal if any of the other conditions are violated.
“The process has started. In due course of time, information [on the detainees released] will be generated,” said Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Border) Devojyoti Mukherjee.
