Rohingya women, children in jail despite being granted bail
January 23, 2019 23:40
The children and women among the 31 Rohingya Muslims, who were stranded on the India-Bangladesh border for four days, were granted bail by a Tripura court, but had to go to jail as no one appeared to submit the bail bonds for them.
West Tripura District and Sessions Judge S L Tripura granted bail to the seven women and 17 children on Tuesday and sent the remaining seven male Rohingyas to judicial custody for 14 days, their counsel Prasenjit Debnath said.
The 31 Rohingyas, who had apparently come from Jammu and Kashmir, were stuck in a no-man's land beyond the barbed wire fence along the India-Bangladesh border in Tripura since January 18.
The Border Security Force, after consulting with the Home Ministry, handed them over to the Amtoli police station in West Tripura district on Tuesday. They were later produced before the court.
Debnath, who appeared in court on behalf of the Rohingyas, sought their bail on the ground that they could not be treated as illegal immigrants because India was a signatory to the resolutions of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
He also pleaded before the court that there would be no one to look after the innocent children in the absence of their mothers.
The court granted bail to the women and children, but as no one appeared to furnish the bail bonds, they were sent to the Bishalgarh Central Jail, Pranab Sengupta, officer-in-charge, Amtoli police station, said.
The jailor of the Bishalgarh Central Jail, Banikanta Debbarma, said, "Like the other inmates, the Rohingyas are also given three meals a day, according to the diet prescribed by the government. Their diet includes pulses, rice, milk, biscuits."
The 17 Rohingya children were staying with their mothers in a separate cell provided by the authorities, he said, adding that the seven men were put up in a separate cell in the section for men.
The situation of the 31 Rohingyas had led to a blame game between the BSF and its counterpart in Bangladesh -- the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) -- with the two sides accusing each other of pushing them into their territories.
The decision to hand over the Rohingyas to the Tripura Police was taken after the BSF and the BGB failed to reach a decision during several rounds of talks on the issue.
Twelve and 62 Rohingyas were apprehended in Tripura in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
In October 2017, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had ordered all the state governments to identify and monitor Rohingya refugees.
It had said the Centre viewed the infiltration of Rohingyas from Rakhine state of Myanmar into Indian territory as a burden on the country's resources, aggravating the security challenges to the country.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, described by the UN as the most persecuted minority in the world, fled their homes in 2017 to escape an alleged crackdown by the Myanmarese military.
Many of them reached India via Bangladesh. -- PTI
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