When Bilal Dewan was taken into Assam’s Matia camp on March 11, 2023, he had already spent over seven years in detention at Dibrugarh Central Jail. In all those years, he had neither met nor spoken to anyone from his family.
But to his joy, in the sprawling Matia ‘transit camp’ — Assam’s designated detention camp to house “illegal foreigners” that became functional in 2023 — he met Abdul Rahim, his elder brother. Abdul Rahim had similarly been brought to the camp the previous day after having spent six years in Jorhat jail.
“Maybe it was sad to find out that we were both in this situation. But at that moment, I was so happy. He was the first family member I had seen in seven years,” says Bilal Dewan, now 30.
In that complex where the brothers lived for another nearly two years among others similarly condemned as foreigners, Bilal and Abdul laid their mattresses next to each other’s — the days went past and they wondered if anything would change for them.
It did. On November 30, 2024, Abdul Rahim stepped out on bail and returned to his family home in Central Assam’s Nagaon district. Two months later, Bilal Dewan too was released on bail after having spent nine years in detention.
As he returned to his siblings in Nagaon after nearly a decade, unbeknownst to him, five days after his release, the Supreme Court directed the Assam government to initiate the process of his deportation from the country within two weeks.
Bilal Dewan was among 63 inmates of the Matia camp (as on January 21) whose uncertain status has spurred the Supreme Court to question the process of deportation of individuals who have been declared as not being Indian citizens but whose nationality is not ascertained. At the core of what the Supreme Court is pushing the state and the Centre to answer is: what happens to people declared foreigners by foreigners’ tribunals in Assam after they are detained?
“When we asked a question to the Chief Secretary of Assam… whether the nationality of the persons listed at serial nos. 1 to 63 is known, he answered affirmatively. As it is known that persons at serial nos. 1 to 63 are citizens of a particular country [Bangladesh], there is no reason why State of Assam cannot start procedure for their deportation,” stated the Supreme Court bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan in their February 4 order.
When The Indian Express met Bilal in the eastern Assam town of Moran — where he has returned to work as a scrap collector after his release — he had not heard about the discussion in the Supreme Court and was bewildered when told about it.
“I don’t even know Bangladesh. I have never been there. I have never even seen what kind of a place Bangladesh is. They can send me there only if I am from Bangladesh. But I have always been here,” says Bilal.
While Bilal is one of those directly addressed by the Supreme Court’s order, its implication extends to those like his elder brother Abdul Rahim, 40, who was an inmate at the Matia camp until shortly before the February 4 order of the Supreme Court.
The brothers stayed In the Matia camp for nearly two years. The days went past and they wondered if anything would change for them. (Illustration by Suvajit Dey)
“Broadly, there are two categories of foreigners. One category is where the persons are declared as not Indian nationals and their nationality is known. The other category is where the (foreigners’) tribunal has declared that the persons are not Indian nationals but their nationality is not known. As far as the first category is concerned, it poses no difficulty. As far as the second category is concerned, the Union of India will have to tell the Court in what manner their cases will be dealt with because they are neither Indian nationals nor their citizenship status is known,” stated the Supreme Court Bench on February 4.
The brothers are part of this ‘second category’ and the Solicitor General recently stated that the question was being dealt with “at the highest level”. Following this, the court granted the Centre time till March 21 to place its decision on record.
‘No one told me why I’m a Bangladeshi’
Like in thousands of cases of people declared foreigners by tribunals, both Bilal Dewan and Abdul Rahim had been declared foreigners ‘ex-parte’, meaning that the proceedings had been conducted and orders passed in their absence.
The tribunals get two kinds of cases: those against whom a “reference” has been made by the border police, and those whose names in the electoral rolls have a ‘D’ (Doubtful) against them – D-voters are people who in 1997 were marked “doubtful” in the electoral rolls of Assam after allegedly being unable to prove their citizenship during verification.
According to latest data presented by the Assam government in the ongoing assembly session, of the 2.44 lakh D-voters sent to the tribunals, 42,989 have been declared foreigners. Also, of the 4.36 lakh cases forwarded to the tribunals by the border police, 1,65,992 have been declared foreigners.
The cases referred to the tribunals by the border police based on suspicions that the person is a foreigner — like that of the brothers — are served notices to report for the inquiry. The mandate of the tribunals is to determine whether a person presented before them is a “foreigner” or an Indian citizen. According to the provisions of Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, the onus of proving that the person is not a foreigner lies with the person.
Of all the 63 detainees who have been under discussion in the apex court, Bilal had spent the longest time in detention. But in all these years, he said, he has never seen the tribunal’s order declaring him a foreigner nor is he aware of how the case against him first came to be.
Neither has Abdul Rahim who said that it was only after he was picked up by police in August 2016 that he was told that he had been served a notice by the border police 11 years ago. While the brothers are originally from Haibargaon in Nagaon district, both had been living and working 280 km away in Moran, a town in Dibrugarh district, since the early 2000s.
“I used to work in Moran doing whatever daily wage work I got. Early one morning, I had stepped out of my room to have some tea. When I was going back to my room, a policeman caught me and said that a ‘sir’ was calling me to the police station. He took me to the police station and I sat there for some time. Then, I was given a challan for Jorhat jail. That was on August 5, 2016. Since then, I was in jail until I got out two months ago,” says Abdul Rahim.
He says that at that time, he was not aware of what he had been accused of. “I only realised when I went to the jail. There were many more people like me. Some 300-350 people were there who were called Bangladeshi. Some of them had been there for seven years, eight years…,” he says.
Later, he says, he was told by police that he had been served a notice by border police in Haibargaon in 2005. However, his sister Ameena Khatoon, who is the one who coordinated with lawyers to get him out, claims that no one in their family had received it. “Our parents died when we were children, and I was very young. We don’t know when the notice came or who received it,” she says.
The Indian Express accessed the order by the Sivasagar foreigners’ tribunal, dated May 22 2008, which had declared him a foreigner, and found that it was a “common judgement” which collectively declared 95 people – including Abdul Rahim – foreigners ‘ex-parte’ (in their absence). The order states that in the case of all 95 people, the notices could not be served to the person concerned since they had moved away from their last known places of residence and instead, signatures had been taken from “respectable witnesses” in the localities.
Similarly, Bilal’s order, dated February 7 2014, states that he has been declared a foreigner as he did not appear before the tribunal and failed to discharge his burden of proving that he is not a foreigner.
Both the brothers insist that their paternal grandfather Misir Ali Dewan was included in the 1951 National Register of Citizens and recorded as a resident of Nagaon’s Haibargaon.
“When I found out what the case was, I asked the police sir for a chance to bring my documents from Nagaon and show him, but he said that the case is already done. No one told me why I’m a Bangladeshi. I don’t even know anything about all these things and processes, so what would I have even done if I knew? Once inside, I stayed as they kept me. What could I have said to anyone? I stayed how they kept, would eat food when they would give food, that’s it,” says Bilal.
Now, however, a set of lawyers working on citizenship matters — who helped them secure their bail on the basis of the Supreme Court’s 2020 directions to release on bail such individuals who had been in detention for over two years — are looking to challenge the tribunals’ orders in the High Court.
“We met the two brothers when we happened to visit the Matia Transit Camp for another case. At first, we were shocked to find that both the cases are ex-parte, which also means that no effective legal representation was provided to them at the trial stage. It took us some time to get them out on the SC’s release orders as multiple jurisdictions were involved. Our next step is to challenge their orders at the High Court. Of course, the larger issue of constitutionality of detention is subjudice in the Supreme Court, therefore, I am barred from commenting on that. We only hope for the best,” said Dipesh Agarwala, one of the lawyers.
Several others among the 63 detainees, and other people who have been declared foreigners and detained in the past are in various stages of legally challenging the orders of the tribunals.
‘An arbitrary system’
While Bilal and Abdul Rahim have been declared foreigners by tribunals, what the Assam government had told the Supreme Court is that it had not been able to initiate the process of deportation of declared foreigners because they had not “divulged” their Bangladesh addresses.
A senior Assam government official earlier told The Indian Express, “The process of deportation is a diplomatic issue and is a Central government matter. The role of the state government is limited to referring the matter to the Ministry of External Affairs. In all these cases, we have to fill a Nationality Verification Status Report and send it to the MEA which it sends to the embassy or high commission of the other country. Once the embassy tells us that the individual is indeed a national of that country and the address is correct, we hand over these persons to the BSF, which takes it up with the paramilitary force of the other country… In all the other cases [204 other inmates in the detention camp at the time] we have sent the reports to the MEA but these 63 people have not divulged an address in Bangladesh.”
However, as noted by the Supreme Court, the state asserts that they know that their country of origin is Bangladesh.
“What address can I tell them? How can I say that I have an address in Bangladesh when I was born here and even my grandparents were here?” argues Bilal.
Lawyer Aman Wadud, who has worked extensively on citizenship cases, questions the process. “It’s an arbitrary system where a large number of Indian citizens are accused of being illegal immigrants by investigation agencies, mostly without proper investigation. These cases are referred to the tribunals, where they are stripped of their citizenship — either for not appearing before the tribunal or for minor variations in names in their documents. But to deport them, the ‘country of origin’ needs to confirm that they are nationals of that country. Why will Bangladesh do that? The tribunal decides whether a person is an illegal immigrant or not and they are de facto accused of coming from Bangladesh,” he says.
More than eight years after he was first detained, Abdul Rahim still comprehends very little of his experience. He is now going through the motions – making his weekly appearance at the local police station, as is mandated by his bail conditions. But he is quick to grasp the implications of all the talk on deportation.
“How can I accept anyone saying that we should be removed from India? If they remove us, where will they put us? They need to give us a place somewhere. If they don’t, how will we go? We have not given an address for anywhere else because we don’t have one. We only have an Indian address. If they want us to go there, they will have to give us citizenship for that country. We can’t be from nowhere.”