Justice in modern India - After 30 years of service, retired army officer from Assam branded as Bangladeshi
A retired army officer
has been branded as a Bangladeshi immigrant by Assam police, asking him to
prove his citizenship in a bizarre twist to the contentious issue of illegal
migrants in the northeastern state. Mohd Azmal Hoque, who
retired as a junior commissioned officer (JCO) last year, after serving the
army for 30 years was living a peaceful life with his family at Guwahati, when
he received a notice from a foreigners’ tribunal last month. Hoque has been asked
to prove he is Indian and not an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant.
In Assam there are 100
foreigners’ tribunals set up to detect illegal immigrants, especially those who
entered India after creation of Bangladesh. The notice mentioned
that the district police have registered a case against him alleging he entered
Assam illegally without any valid documents after March 25, 1971, the day
Pakistan army launched Operation Searchlight against the people of then East
Pakistan. The notice, issued on
July 6, asked Hoque to appear before the court on September 11 to prove his
citizenship, failing which the case against him would continue ex-parte.
But the 49-year-old failed
to keep the date as the notice reached his ancestral village Kalahikash near
Boko, nearly 70 km from the state capital, after September 11. He will now have
to appear before the tribunal on October 13. “This incident has
saddened me a lot. Even after 30 years of service to the nation, we are asked
to prove our identity. This is unnecessary harassment,” he told Hindustan
Times.
Hoque joined the army
in 1986 in a non-combat role as technician and retired from the corps of
electronics and mechanical engineers (EME) as Subedar after serving at several
places including border areas in Punjab and Arunachal Pradesh.
Incidentally, Hoque’s
wife Mamtaj Begum had also been summoned by a foreigners’ tribunal in 2012 to
prove her citizenship. Since she had all necessary documents, she was able to
satisfy the tribunal.
Hoque’s son is at
present studying in the prestigious Rashtriya Indian Military College in
Dehradun while his daughter is at the Army Public School in Narengi, Guwahati. Hoque maintains that
his family is indigenous Assamese and his father’s name is mentioned in the
voters list of 1966. His mother’s name is listed in the 1951 National Register
of Citizens (NRC).
“I have no doubt that
I will get justice at the tribunal. But it pains me when my daughter questions
me if this is how the country treats those who serve it for so many years,” he
said. Infiltration of
illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is an emotive issue in Assam. A
six-year-anti-foreigner agitation from 1979 to 1985 led to signing of the Assam
Accord which set March 25, 1971 as the cut of date for detection and
deportation of illegal Bangladeshis.
As per official
records, nearly 80,000 people have been detected as foreigners in Assam since
1986 and 29,729 were deported. At present around 200,000 cases are pending in
the foreigners tribunals.
An interim report
submitted earlier this year by a committee set up by the state’s BJP-led
government to suggest measures to protect land rights of indigenous people
claimed illegal Bangladeshis outnumber indigenous people in 15 of the state’s
33 districts. This is not the first
time a tribunal served a notice to a public servant. Earlier, Assam police
constable Abu Taher Ahmed was accused of being an illegal immigrant. A
foreigners’ tribunal later held him an Indian citizen.
