Hyderabad: The Hyderabad city police has constituted two teams, one comprising 30 personnel, to ascertain information about the Rohingya refugees and the other to keep track of Bangladeshi citizens residing in the city.
These two teams have been gathering information about people who have migrated from Bangladesh or Myanmar.
They were trained on the methodology to be used to extract information from illegal immigrants. The teams distribute a form with the help of the local police which seeks information including such as name, father’s name, residential address, place of work and date of arrival in India and date of settlement in Hyderabad.
According to Rohingya refugees, the form identified them as ‘Bengali Muslims; which was not true. They have demanded that they be distinguished from Bangladeshi citizens and should be recognised as Burmese or Rohingya Muslims as they were citizens of Myanmar.
When the forms were distributed in Balapur, they were surprised to see that they had been termed as Bengali Muslims and staged a demonstration they be identified as Myanmar citizens.
A Rohingya Muslim, Mr Ali said, “We want to return to Myanmar where we were born if we are repatriated.”
The Rohingya refugees expressed their gratitude to the state government and MIM president Akbaruddin Owaisi who allowed them to live here. Another Rohingya said, “After arriving in India we realized the meaning of independence and liberty. We are not getting any aid from any international agency; it's the local people who are helping us for which we are thankful to them. We are ready to provide information about ourselves; we just want that we should not be branded as Bengali Muslims.”
