Ex Armyman Asked to Prove Nationality

Of late many such cases have come to the forefront in which genuine Indian citizens have been harassed in the name of doubtful voters in Assam. After retired army personal Ajmal Hoque, Reshminara Begum who was the daughter of a freedom fighter, the latest case has been of Mahiruddin Ahmed, a retired army personnel and his wife Husniara Ahmed being served notice of being D voters and summoned to Foreigners Tribunal. Mahiruddin Ahmed served in the Indian army from 1986 to 2004 and after taking voluntary retirement he served as a clerk in the Army School in Bhatinda, Punjab till 2016. His wife Husniara Ahmed too has been accused of being an illegal immigrant.

This is the latest case in which genuine Indians have been randomly accused of illegally migrating to India. Mahir Uddin was born in 1964 in Khablarvita village of Barpeta’s Koyakusi. His father’s name is Late Basir Uddin. After finishing his secondary education from Koyakusi Higher Secondary school in 1980, he joined the army in 1986 as an Army Ordinance Corp and was posted in Andhra Pradesh’s Secunderabad. In 1989 he married Howly’s Kumullipara village’s Husniara Ahmed. Mahir Uddin’s elder brother Jalal Uddin Ahmed retired as an Assistant Sessions’ Judge. His younger brother is a central government employee working in BSNL. Husniara Ahmed was born in 1972 and her parents’ names appear on the Voters’ List of 1966. Mahiruddin Ahmed also has documents with his parents’ names dating way back to 1930s. Employment in government jobs is preceded by proper police verification. In such a scenario while there can be no doubt about the citizenship of other family members, randomly marking two members as doubtful voters, show the callous attitude of officials.

After serving all over the country and his retirement he came back to Koyakusi, Barpeta. The notice served to him stated that he was suspected to have entered Assam after March 24, 1971, which is the cut-off date for detecting foreigners according to the Assam Accord. It also states that when there was investigation with regard to verify his citizenship, he was unable to produce required valid documents. Such claims in case of government employees fall flat. Mahir Uddin and his wife had been summoned to the Foreigners’ Tribunal on November 6, 2017. Mahir Uddin has stated that their paper documents are intact. Lamenting that genuine Indians should not be harassed in the name of finding immigrants, he said that he has taken up this issue with his seniors in the Army to do the needful.

Detecting and deporting foreigners to safeguard the interest of the indigenous people of Assam was a burning issue in the 60s and 70s. It was a crucial cause of the six-years-long Assam Movement which started in 1979 and ended in 1985 with the signing of the Accord. The Movement which saw entrenched agitation against foreigners witnessed the outburst of violence in the rise of militants like ULFA and genocides like the Nellie massacre of 1983 which left close to 3000 people dead, mostly women and children. While successive governments claimed to solve the immigrants’ issue it continues to be just a topic for electoral manifestoes. The near completion of National Register of Citizens (NRC) shows that the myth of large-scale migration is bound to burst. The latest trend hence has been randomly marking people as D voters and declaring them foreigners. Till date around 52000 people have been declared foreigners by the Tribunals.

Mahir Uddin’s case shows how due process of finding out doubtful voters is flouted. The process of verification of citizenship of suspected D voters must have been bypassed or else Mahiruddin Ahmed would have been cleared of being a Doubtful Voter. A few days back another retired Army officer, Md Azmal Hoque was served a similar notice by the foreigners’ tribunal based on a police report. Following media outrage, the police had to apologise. A few months back, another police official still in the job was served a similar notice. Such outrage against harassment, however, is selective and limited to people who have served in the police, army etc. It nonetheless shows the highly faulty process of finding out illegal immigrants. A large number of common people mostly working as daily wage labourers, brick kiln workers etc are picked up on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. Most are declared as foreigners in tribunals and very few actually go to higher courts to challenge this decision. But when they do, almost everyone is declared Indian. A similar incident was the Moinal Mollah case in which the High Court ordered Mollah to be deported and he had to go to Supreme Court for a fair trial. Today Moinal Mollah walks free as an Indian citizen. Such stories abound.

Incidents like this show the ordeal that people marked as D voters have to go through. While people like Mahiruddin Ahmed can take up the issue with higher authority, most others don’t have the financial means to even appoint a lawyer or the required knowledge to fight back. As such detention camps are overflowing with suspected foreigners who are in fact people denied a fair hearing at different points of time.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick.