Assuming that his custody is illegal, the Gauhati High Court on Monday directed the officials to take a person into custody as part of the Assam government on ‘declared foreigners’ last month. Despite an appeal pending in the High Court, he was allegedly detained despite being out of the court order and being with the conditions of bail.
Golpara resident Mojida Begum contacted Gauhati High Court after his son Hasinur, alias Hachinur was detained by Assam Police on 25 May, declared people as part of a state-wide campaign, in which foreigners were being detained and “was pushed back” in Bangladesh.
On Monday, a bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and a Gauhati High Court of Malsari Nandi called their detention illegal and said in their order that “such illegal custody could not be allowed even for a minute”. It also refused counsles for the request of the state respondents for additional time to obtain instructions from its customers.
Hachinur was declared a foreigner by a tribunal of foreigners at Kamup Metropolitan in 2018 and was kept in custody in Golpara District Jail in 2019, after which he approached the Gauhati High Court in 2020 challenging the FT order. In June 2021, while hearing his case, the then Chief Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Achintya Malla Bujor Barua’s bench directed that he was released on bail as he had completed two years in custody and the Supreme Court issued a general order last year that people who were in custody may be issued.
Referring to this order, the Gauhati High Court said that the old writ petition in the same court is still pending for disposal.
After his release on bail, Hachinur was again detained during the rift on 25 May, after which his family said he had no information about his hideout. After contacting the High Court for relief, her mother Mojida Begum informed the court for FT cases that she was being lodged at a holding center in Kokrajhar under the 7th Police Battalion there.
At the last hearing on 11 June, the counsel for petitioner AK Sikdar argued that Hachinur had followed his bail conditions to present himself at Golpara police station every week, with the last three incidents of attendance on 5, 12 and 19 May.
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