Rohingyas flee Jharkhand foreigners’ camp, second incident in six months

Two Rohingyas Tuesday fled the Foreigners Holding Camp in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district, where they had been put up after recently finishing a three-year sentence in a Dumka jail for illegally entering India without a passport.

Another Rohingya had fled the same camp in September 2020.

The three, Abdullah, Jahid Hussain and Mohammad Javed — all residents of Myanmar as per the jail documents — were arrested in 2016 from Barharwa Railway Station in Sahibganj district of Jharkhand. In 2018, they were sentenced to three years of imprisonment for entering India without valid documents through Bangladesh.

Police sources said they have now pasted a lookout notice on the railway station to apprehend them.

A source in the police said the district administration had asked for security for the Holding Camp, which had been given. “Now, it is up to the administration to monitor the inmates. There were four foreign nationals in the camp — one from Bangladesh and three from Myanmar. One Rohingya had fled earlier, after which we deported the Bangladeshi national. Two were left, but Myanmar is not taking them back since they are Rohingyas,” said the source.

Birendra Bhushan, Inspector General Of Prisons, Jail Inspectorate, Jharkhand, said the two Myanmar nationals escaped through the window after they cut its rods Tuesday evening. “There is a lapse in security, the district police are responsible. We had written to them to improve security as one person from Myanmar had fled the camp earlier. We have initiated an inquiry.”

Bhushan added that they have been writing to the Embassy repatriation, but haven’t got a ‘satisfactory’ response.

The jail documents, as seen by The Indian Express, state that the three foreign nationals were shifted from Dumka Central Jail to Holding Foreigners Camp, Hazaribagh, on February 12, 2020, for repatriation. The three had been arrested after they were spotted by the Railway Police on November 9, 2016, in an air-conditioned coach of Farakka Express, and could not produce valid documents.