‘Do something, people are being deported from Assam to Bangladesh overnight’, on the petitioner’s appeal the judge said – will not hear the petition…

On the petition filed against the deportation of Bangladeshi people from Assam, the Supreme Court said- go to the High Court – Source: PTI

Advocate Shoaib Alam raised concern in the court that people in the state are being detained and deported to Bangladesh overnight while their legal cases are pending.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear a petition filed against the Assam government’s policy of deporting people to Bangladesh by terming them as infiltrators. The Supreme Court has said that the petitioner should go to the High Court. A petitioner expressed his personal pain in the Supreme Court and said that perhaps his mother has been suddenly sent to Bangladesh without due process. He does not know where his mother is. The court said that this petition will be heard next week.

On May 30, a person named Yunus Ali filed a petition before a bench of Chief Justice Bhushan Ramakrishna Gavai, Justice Augustine George Masih and Justice A S Chandurkar, saying that his mother has been illegally detained by the Assam Police. On the arguments of Yunus Ali’s lawyer Shoaib Alam, the Supreme Court had given June 2 as the date for hearing. Yunus Ali had requested for the early release of his mother Monowara.

The petitioner alleges that on May 24, his mother was called to the Dhubri police station on the pretext of recording a statement and then taken into custody. During this, Advocate Shoaib Alam, while raising objections, also expressed concern that people are detained in the state and deported to Bangladesh overnight while their legal cases are pending.

The lawyer told the court that a special leave petition (SLP) was filed by Yunus Ali’s mother in 2017, on which notices were issued, but still people are being deported while the hearing is still going on in this court.

He said that many such videos are being circulated, which show that people were caught overnight and sent across the border. Monowara was on bail since December 12, 2019, following the Supreme Court order in the case, which allowed conditional release to detainees who had spent more than three years in Assam’s foreign detention camps.

The petitioner says that when he went to the police station the next day and told the officers that his case was still pending in the Supreme Court, he was not allowed to meet his mother and his release was also denied. The petition challenges the Guwahati High Court’s decision, which had upheld the Foreigners’ Tribunal’s decision declaring Monowara a foreigner.