8 more Rohingyas from Myanmar held in Assam

Guwahati: With eight more Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar getting arrested in Assam, 22 Myanmarese, including women and children, have been detained in the last three days for illegally entering into India, officials said on Saturday.

An Assam Police official said that acting on a secret tip-off, eight Rohingyas, suspected to be refugees fleeing from their camps in southeast Bangladesh, were held on Friday from Mazarpar village in Hailakandi district in southern Assam.

Hailakandi district Superintendent of Police, Pabindra Kumar Nath said the eight Rohingyas, including three children and a woman, were sheltered in the house of Md Yusuf Ali Mazumdar, who fled from his home when the police reached the village. Mazumder’s brother Islamuddin Mazumdar was apprehended by the police.

In another development, Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) officials said that the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and the Government Railway Police (GRP) troopers on Wednesday arrested 14 Myanmarese refugees from New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal. The detainees include eight women and two children.

The officers and personnel of RPF and GRP, following an alarm from the passengers of Agartala-New Delhi Special Rajdhani Express, detected the 14 people belonging to the Rohingya Muslim community.

Rohingyas from refugee camps in Bangladesh often enter into the northeastern states of India illegally in search of jobs or get trapped in human trafficking.

Over 738,000 Rohingyas from Rakhine in western Myanmar have arrived in the camps in Cox’s Bazar since the beginning of the ethinic troubles on August 25, 2017, following a wave of violence and persecution, which has been described by the United Nations as attempted ethnic cleansing.

Four northeastern states – Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) – share 1,643 km unfenced borders with Myanmar while Tripura (856 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Mizoram (318 km) and Assam (263 km) share an 1,880 km borders with Bangladesh.

By IANS