Sringar: Jammu and Kashmir authorities have warned of stern action against those involved in facilitating foreign immigrants including those from Myanmar and Bangladesh to settle down in the Union Territory (UT) after their entering India illegally. “Such unlawful behaviour will not be tolerated. The police has been asked to register the FIR immediately against anyone who may have committed the offence. Stern legal action will follow,” said a government official in Jammu on Tuesday.
The warning has come following the J&K police and other law enforcement agencies in their renewed crackdown on the Rohingyas and Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in various parts of the UT have found that many of them were helped by locals in obtaining various Proof of Identity (POI) documents including Aadhaar and Voter ID Card. More than a dozen people have been arrested or detained for questioning by the police in Doda, Kishtwar and Poonch districts.
Three FIRs have been registered against the illegal migrants and their alleged facilitators in Doda and one in Poonch, the police sources said. The police said that nine Rohingyas and one Bangladeshi national are facing legal action for illegally obtaining Aadhaar, Voter ID, PAN and ration cards and even domicile certificates on forged documents showing them permanent residents of the Doda district.
They have been identified as Shabnam Begum, Raheela Begum, Shakeela Begum, Boor Bahaar, Zeenat Begum, Jahan Ara, Meem Bano, Muskan Banoo and Zavaira Begum- all residents of Myanmar. The Bangladeshi national who has been accused of violating visa norms and, during her overstaying. procuring Indian POI is Nusrat Jahan, originally a resident of Dhaka.
In neighbouring Kishtwar, the district police raided four residential houses earlier this week after receiving reports that illegal settlers from Myanmar were staying in these. The action followed the registration of an FIR under Sections 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code at the Dachan Police Station. “We had received reports that some Rohingyas are staying in the area illegally. We have collected documentary evidence and seized incriminating materials during these raids,” said SSP Kishtwar Mohammad Khalil Poswal.
He said that the investigation corroborated reports that these Rohingyas managed to obtain Aadhaar, Voter ID and ration cards and even domicile certificates illegally.
Reports said that those whose houses were raided and who face action under law had married illegal immigrants and then helped their spouses in changing their foreign status to permanent resident status. The accused have been identified as Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh, Mushtaq Ahmed, Shahnawaz and Fayaz Ahmed Chopan.
Mr. Poswal said that action will be initiated against the government officials who issued Indian POIs to the Rohingyas and their other facilitators as well.
In Poonch, four persons have been arrested for facilitating a Rohingya man identified as Muhammad Noaman in obtaining Aadhaar and ration cards on forged documents. The police said that Noaman was staying illegally in Poonch’s Dhargloon village since 2013. He married the daughter of a local resident Nazir Ahmad Gujjar in 2016. After the investigations revealed that Noaman had with the help of his father-in-law and two others obtained forged PIOs, the police arrested him in October this year and is currently in judicial custody.
The police raided Gujjar’s house earlier this week and subsequently arrested him and three others -two of them identified as Muhammad Sayaf and Waseem Akram.
Last month, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had detained a Myanmar resident Zaffar Alam from Narwal-Bathindi area in Jammu during raids at multiple locations across ten states and UTs including J&K. The NIA is currently investigating a case of illegal human trafficking in the country.
The agency had in a statement said that in a big blow to human trafficking networks operating across ten states and UTS, it has in close coordination with the Border Security Force (BSF) and state police forces, conducted a comprehensive operation during which a total of 55 locations across Tripura, Assam, West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Haryana, Rajasthan, UTs of J&K and Puducherry were raided.” The action, it had said, followed the registration of four cases pertaining to a human trafficking network responsible for the infiltration and settlement of illegal migrants across the Indo-Bangladesh border into India, including those of Rohingya origin at the NIA branches in Guwahati, Chennai, Bangalore and Jaipur.
The J&K authorities had in March 2021 detained about 170 Rohingyas from various areas of Jammu and subsequently shifted them to a ‘holding centre’ before their deportation. The move followed some of the local right-wing political parties and other organisations demanding immediate deportation of all Rohingyas and Bangladeshi nationals who are living in Jammu, alleging that their presence is a “conspiracy to alter the demographic character” of the region and a “threat to peace”.
Ravinder Raina, president of J&K unit of BJP, had said that the UT “is already facing a difficult security situation” and that the presence of Rohingya Muslims “could be used by vested interests to worsen it”. He had also said, “We sympathise with them. But given the situation prevailing in J&K there is a possibility of anti-national forces using them against India. They should be taken out of Jammu and settled somewhere else.”
Various human rights groups had said that “facing harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and deportation to Myanmar, the country they had fled to escape genocidal violence”, about a one third of 1,800 families of the Rohingya Muslim refugees putting up in shanty towns J&K had left for various parts of the country or went abroad between July 2021 and June 2022.
As per official statistics, there were 13,700 foreigners, mainly Rohingya Muslims, living in camps and slums in the twin districts of Jammu and Samba and working as day labourers or doing menial jobs to make ends meet for years but in March 2021 the local authorities started the process of deporting them in a special drive against what they claim are illegal immigrants.
