A 68-year-old Muslim woman from Assam, detained by the police in May, has been found in Dhaka, Bangladesh, her family told Scroll on Friday.

A BBC Bangla crew spotted Sakina Begum in Mirpur, a crowded residential locality in Dhaka, and contacted her family.

Begum, a resident of Sonpur village in Nalbari district, was among the hundreds taken into police custody in May amid a crackdown on declared foreigners.

Typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, declared foreigners are those who have failed to prove that they are Indian citizens before the state’s foreigners tribunals.

Many declared foreigners detained in May were taken to the border with Bangladesh and forced to cross over, often at gunpoint. Their families discovered they were in Bangladesh when videos surfaced showing them there.

Begum’s family, however, had been unable to trace her for four months. “We did not have any contact with her after the police took away,” her daughter Rasia Begum told Scroll. “In the last four months, we went to Matia detention centre three times, but they said my mother was not there.”

The Matia transit camp in Assam’s Goalpara district is India’s largest detention centre that houses undocumented migrants and refugees.

“We only got to know recently when a news team came to our home and made a video call through which we found out my mother is in Bangladesh,” she added.

The BBC Bangla team was alerted about Sakina Begum by residents of the Mirpur locality. They found her crying while sitting in front of a shop, and gave her shelter and refuge.

Her family is now worried about how they will bring her from Bangladesh.

“We are poor people living on daily wages…how will we bring her?” Rasia asked as she broke down during a phone conversation. “We have been thinking about her day and night. We have not been at peace since we saw the news. We have already sold our homestead and land to fight the case. We are helpless.”

Rasia Begum maintained that her mother is an Assamese woman. “She does not understand or speak Bangla,” she said. “You can ask any person in Barkura…she is an Assamese.”

Sakina Begum belongs to the Garia Muslim community – a group designated by the government as “indigenous” to Assam by the Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma led BJP government.

Legal battles

Begum was declared a foreigner in 2012 by a foreigners tribunal.

Foreigner tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to Assam, which rule on citizenship cases. They have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and of declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

Begum’s daughter, 45-year-old Rasia Begum, told Scroll that her mother was sent to the Kokrajhar detention centre in 2016, where she was held for five years.

In 2019, Begum was released on the basis of a Supreme Court directive allowing bail to declared foreigners imprisoned for more than three years.

“Since then, she had been going to Nalbari police station to sign [to record her appearance] as part of the bail conditions,” said Rasia Begum.

She alleged that Sakina Begum was called to the police station on the pretext of recording her appearance on May 25.

All BTC Minority Students Union or ABMSU, an organisation which claims to represent the interests of Muslims in Assam, had on August 4 filed a public interest litigation before the Gauhati High Court stating that a total of 21 Muslims went missing from nine districts of Assam after being detained by the police.

“We have issued a helpline number so that if there is anyone in Assam who went missing after being detained by the police, their family can contact us,” said Taison Hussian, who heads the ABMSU.

“Rasia Begum , the youngest daughter, had called to tell me that her mother is missing,” Hussain said.

Assam’s home department in July had filed an affidavit in response to the petition by the All BTC Minority Students Union, in which it said that Sakina Begum was handed over to the BSF sector headquarters Panban in Dhubri, which shares boundary with Bangladesh, on May 26.

“This proves that she was forced into Bangladesh,” Hussain said.

He said that even after Sakina Begum was handed over to the BSF, there was no official confirmation that she had been forced into Bangladesh. “The family only became certain when they talked to her with the help of the BBC people,” he said.

Hussain alleged that Assam’s BJP government has unleashed injustice against Muslims.

“An indigenous Assamese woman with roots in the state was forced out of the country as she is a Muslim without any due procedures,” he alleged. “This exposes the faulty system of the foreigners tribunals.”

The case

In 2006, based on a reference by the border police, a foreigners tribunal case was registered against Sakina Begum, in which it was alleged that she was a resident of the Kharsila village in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district and had migrated to India without documents after March 25, 1971. The foreigners tribunal declared her a foreigner in 2012.

Four years later, in 2016, Begum’s family moved the Gauhati High Court quashing the tribunal’s order.

However, a bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Paran Kumar Phukan refused to entertain her plea, stating that she had failed to prove her Indian citizenship by furnishing reliable evidence. The court said that she had not appeared before the tribunal as per Section 9 of the Foreigners’ Act, 1946 which provides that the burden of proving citizenship is on the person against whom proceedings are being held.

The court held that “it is a lame excuse on the part of the petitioner to blame her unknown and unidentified lawyer as being responsible for her absence”. The bench also questioned Begum’s delay in approaching the court.

Nevertheless, Sakina Begum’s family denied that she is a Bangladeshi national.

Rasia said her mother is a voter of Nalbari district.

Scroll has seen Sakina’s name on the state’s 2005 and 2018 voter lists, as well as the name of her father Mokbil Ali on the 1970 voter list. Sakina also has a job card from 2008 under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and a Below Poverty Line card from 2003.

Also read: As Assam’s declared foreigners go ‘missing’ in police crackdown, panicked families seek answers

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