Mohammad Nur Hussain (34), his wife Sahera Begum (26), and their two minor children have been declared as Indians in a re-trial by a Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) after spending one and a-half-year in detention centre as ‘illegal foreigners’.
Hussain, a rickshaw puller in Guwahati hailing from Lawdong village in Assam’s Udalgiri district, said that they were mistakenly arraigned of being Bangladeshis and crossing the border illegally. He said we are proud Indians belonging to Assam.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) of 1951 features his grandparents’ name and his father’s name along with his grandparents was in the 1965 voters’ list. Begum’s father has also appeared in NRC 1951 and the voter list of 1966. The family even has land documents dating back to 1958-59. To identify as an Indian citizen in Assam the cut-off date is March 24, 1971.
Even after all this, in 2017 Guwahati police began looking into the couple’s citizenship credentials. In August that year, Begum’s case was referred to FT No. 4 of Kamrup (Metro) district and in January 2018, the same action was taken against Hussain.
The couple was illiterate and was in no position to make sense of the documents or what step they were supposed to take. Somehow Hussain managed a lawyer for himself by paying Rs. 4,000, but on the other hand, his wife remained unrepresented at the tribunal. On 28 August 2018, Hussain’s lawyer withdrew from the case as the lawyer said that he won’t be able to afford his fee which led to him missing his successive hearings at the FT. Further, the lawyer suggested him to consider running from Guwahati or else he will be arrested by police.
The FT declared Begum a ‘foreigner’ on May 29, 2018, and Hussain was declared one on March 30, 2019. In June 2019, their entire world came crashing down as the couple were arrested and sent to the detention centre in Goalpara district. As there was no one to take care of the children they had to take them to the detention centre with them.
On October 9, the High Court ordered a retrial setting aside the FT’s orders. On December 16, after few days, the couple were released on bail, the FT declared Hussain an Indian citizen. Begum was also cleared from the foreigner tag on Wednesday.
