Following the Supreme Court order passed in May this year, seven persons have been released from the detention camp located at Bongaigaon on Thursday.
The seven persons who had been released from the detention camps included Nibaran Barman (60), Asiruddin (60), Jalal Uddin (50), Chari Sheikh (66), Manikjan Bibi (54), Ajbahar Ali (55) Ali Akbar (55).
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All the seven had spent more than three years in a detention camp at Bongaigaon and were released against the bail of Rs. One lakh each of two local sureties.
According to government statistics, there are a total of 1043 foreigners lodged in different detention centres in Assam out of which 1025 were from Bangladesh and 25 were from Myanmar.
The apex court in May this year asked the state government to release detainees who have completed three years detention subjected to some condition.
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While the court asked to release the detainees against the execution of bond with two sureties of Rs 1 lakh each the court has also asked the authorities concerned to collect their biometric and stored in a secured database before release from the detention centres.
According to the order passed, the release persons would have to report once every week to the Police Station specified by the Foreigners Tribunal.
“These detainees are being released on a petition filed by human right activist Harsh Mandar,” said rights activist Ashraful Hussain.
Based on his petition the apex court asked the government to release the detainees who had spent more than three years in detention,” Hussain added.
He said that its good to see these people coming out of detention camps.
“However, what is hurting is the fact that they were declared as foreigners while their family members are still Indian citizens,” Hussain added.
“They are all genuine citizens but got declared as foreigners due to lack of documents,” Hussain reiterated.