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Journalism of Courage
Retired Army subedar Mohammad Sanaullah, who was held in a detention center in Guwahati after being declared as an illegal foreigner was released on Saturday after being granted bail a day earlier, ANI reported.
Sanaullah, 52, was granted interim bail by the Gauhati High Court on the condition that he furnishes a bail bond of Rs 20,000 with two local sureties.
The Court also ordered Sanaullah’s biometrics were to be obtained before his release and prohibited him from leaving the territorial jurisdiction of Kamrup (Rural) and Kamrup (Metro) districts.
Sanaullah retired as a subedar with the Army Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME) in August 2017, after serving in insurgency-affected areas of Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East. Following his retirement, he joined the Border Wing of the Assam Police as a sub-inspector in Kamrup (rural) district after qualifying the requisite tests.
Assam Police’s border branch, a special wing that deals with the detection of “illegal” migrants in the state, investigated Sanaullah as a suspected foreigner. The investigation included a “confession” stating that he was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and left his country of “origin” for a “better living”.
The border branch of the state police then put a “reference” case against him at the Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT).
Read | Ex-Army man declared illegal: Witnesses say police faked it
Sanaullah lost the case on May 23 this year and on May 29 was taken to a detention centre for illegal migrants in Assam’s Goalpara district. His family and lawyers had called the probe report “fictitious and fabricated”, and alleged that his thumb impression at the end of it was “forged”.
