Holding that his detention is illegal, the Gauhati High Court Monday directed authorities to release a man detained last month as part of the Assam government’s crackdown on ‘declared foreigners’. He was allegedly detained despite having an appeal pending in the high court, being out on bail by order of the court and abiding with bail conditions.
Goalpara resident Mozida Begum had approached the Gauhati High Court after her son Hasinur, alias Hachinur, had been detained by Assam Police on May 25 as part of a state-wide drive in which people declared foreigners were being detained and “pushed back” into Bangladesh.
On Monday, a Gauhati High Court bench of Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Malasri Nandi termed his detention illegal and stated in their order that “such an illegal detention cannot be allowed for even a minute”. It also refused the counsels for the state respondents’ request for additional time to receive instructions from their clients.
Hachinur had been declared a foreigner by a Foreigners Tribunal in Kamrup Metropolitan in 2018 and placed in detention in Goalpara District Jail in 2019, after which he had approached the Gauhati High Court in 2020 challenging the FT order. In June 2021, while hearing his matter, a Gauhati High Court bench of then Chief Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Achintya Malla Bujor Barua had directed that he be released on bail since he had completed two years in detention and the Supreme Court had issued a general order the previous year that those who had completed two years in detention may be released on bail.
While referring to this order, the Gauhati High Court noted that the older writ petition in the same court is still pending for disposal.
After his release on bail, Hachinur was again detained on May 25 during the ongoing crackdown, after which his family said that they had no information of his whereabouts. After his mother Mozida Begum approached the high court for relief, the Standing Counsel for FT matters informed the court that he was being lodged in a holding centre in Kokrajhar, under the 7th Police Battalion there.
In the last hearing on June 11, the counsel for the petitioner A.K. Sikdar had argued that the Hachinur had been complying with his bail conditions of presenting himself every week at the Goalpara police station, with his last three incidents of attendance there being on May 5, 12 and 19.
