“We don’t know a single person in Bangladesh. Who would we even ask?” says Majidul Islam.
More than three months ago, his mother Mumtaz Begum was deported to Bangladesh. On September 3, the Gauhati High Court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to make efforts to trace and repatriate the 43-year-old, observing that “the State machinery, acting in tandem, had prevented the detenue to exhaust her right to move this Court” against a Foreigners’ Tribunal opinion that declared her a foreigner.
The court ordered an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the tribunal’s opinion that led to her deportation, and laid down interim safeguards governing the arrest and transfer of persons declared foreigners in Assam. It also issued a rare direction to the Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh in interim compensation to her husband Mujammel Hoque, and ordered efforts to facilitate her return.
However, Mumtaz’s family is not sure where those efforts will begin. They don’t know where she is in Bangladesh, and neither by all accounts do the authorities, with the court directing the Ministry of External Affairs to make efforts to trace Mumtaz and facilitate her return to India.
“We fear for her safety, and we feel horrible not being able to help her,” says Majidul, 26, the eldest of five siblings, who works as a vendor in Juria in Nagaon.
Recalling the last time he saw his mother free, when he accompanied her to the Nagaon Foreigners’ Tribunal, Majidul says they expected it to be another routine appearance. “We would go to the office of the Superintendent of Police (Border) every month… because my mother needed to present herself there,” says Majidul.
On June 3, Mumtaz was moved from Matia to a holding centre at Eraligool in Sribhumi district, more than 400 km away.(Express photo)
Nearly 30 yrs in tribunals, court
Mumtaz’s citizenship battle began in 1998, when a police reference was made against her. Mumtaz produced her grandfather’s name in the voter lists of 1965 and 1970, her father’s name in the 1977 list, a school transfer certificate, and panchayat certificates establishing her lineage.
However, in June 2019, overruling all that, the tribunal declared her a foreigner.
The family went to the High Court. The matter remained pending there till April 2026, when the court set aside the tribunal’s opinion, saying that it had failed to consider the evidence on record. Sending the matter back for fresh consideration, the court directed Mumtaz to appear before the tribunal again.
On May 30, Majidul accompanied Mumtaz to the tribunal, carrying a copy of the High Court order. “After the tribunal looked at our petition, our lawyer told us that my mother would be arrested. We were shocked… The High Court had only said there should be an inquiry.”
Less than an hour later, Mumtaz was taken into custody from the tribunal. And by the end of the day, the tribunal had issued a fresh opinion declaring her a foreigner.
According to the petition filed by husband Hoque in the High Court, when he tried to meet the tribunal member later that day, he was told that the tribunal’s earlier opinion – the one the High Court had junked – would hold for now, and a fresh order would come “later”.
Advocate F U Barbhuiya, representing the family, told The Indian Express that while Hoque applied on June 2 for a certified copy of the tribunal’s fresh opinion, it was made available only three days later.
The paper chase
What is now known is that after Mumtaz was taken to the office of the SP (Border) in Nagaon on May 30, her biometric details were recorded and uploaded onto the Foreigners Identification Portal. She was kept at the Nagaon Sadar Police Station, and on June 1, shifted to the Matia detention camp in Goalpara – with a directive by the District Commissioner of Nagaon that she be expelled within 24 hours.
Majidul says his father met Mumtaz twice at the Matia detention centre. “But when he returned after June 5, the people there told him she was not there,” he says. “When we tried in Nagaon, they said she was not in the jail or the police station there either.”
Hoque did the rounds of the Juria and Nagaon Police Stations, and the office of the SP (Border), the family says, and later kept trying to look for her across Assam.
It was only after the family moved the High Court that the trail started surfacing in court records. One affidavit came from the police, another from the district administration and then from the BSF.
These showed that on June 3, Mumtaz was moved from Matia to a holding centre at Eraligool in Sribhumi district, more than 400 km away. She remained there until June 13, when she was handed over to the BSF. Between 12.30 am and 2.30 am, she was pushed across the border into Bangladesh through the Kalaincherra sector in Cachar.
Court rejects govt stand
The State’s defence is that once a tribunal declares someone a foreigner, they become a ‘Declared Foreign National’ and can be expelled under the law. The State also argued that such persons often disappear before deportation and hence the urgency in Mumtaz’s case.
The High Court did not accept that argument. It said that Mumtaz had done exactly what the court had directed her to do. The Bench also noted that the State’s own executive order issued in October 2025 said that expulsion is permitted only after a ‘Declared Foreign National’ has exhausted available remedies before the constitutional courts.
Referring to the June 2 expulsion order, the court said that the directive that it be served on her was “farcical”, as Mumtaz was already in a detention camp by then.
It said that Article 21 protects “not only citizens of India but also aliens” and that the requirement to communicate the grounds of arrest applies, irrespective of citizenship status.
However, an advocate representing the State, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the statutory framework does not expressly require a tribunal opinion before deportation.
The court also observed that the officials “deliberately and wilfully delayed the issuance of a certified copy… to ensure that by that time, the detenue would be removed from Nagaon district”. “… the element of malice in law on part of the learned tribunal is apparent on the face of record”, it said.
Against this backdrop, the court directed that the BJP government in Assam pay Rs 2 lakh to Hoque as an “interim palliative measure” while leaving open the possibility of a larger compensation claim.
“We still do not know anything about where she is, or how she is,” says Majidul. “We just have to trust the courts.”
(With inputs from Sukrita Baruah)
Mumtaz’s citizenship battle began in 1998, when a police reference was made against her. (Express Photo) 
On June 3, Mumtaz was moved from Matia to a holding centre at Eraligool in Sribhumi district, more than 400 km away.(Express photo)
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