- Abhijit Nath, NET Correspondent, Tripura
Agartala, May 03, 2022 : Tripura Police and personnel of the Border Security Force (BSF) jointly on Monday detained 24 Rohingya refugees including from a location near to Kailashahar Airport in Unakoti district, about 139 KMs away from state’s capital city Agartala.
It is reported that the local people of Kailashahar alerted security agencies regarding their presence near the abandoned airport.
Unakoti district’s Superintendent of Police (SP) Kishore Debbarma told Northeast Today said “All were detained. UNHCR issued refugee cards were produced by them which prohibits any kind of arbitrary detention. For examination, they were kept in the police custody. They would be released once all the doubts are cleared.”
District police sources revealed “Among the detained persons, 14 are adults comprising of eight males and six females while rest are children of different ages.”
Later, around midnight, all of them were released, police sources added.
“For last five years, the Myanmar nationals were staying in Kashmir. A few days back, they reached Guwahati onboard Amarnath express and again boarded Kanchanjunga express to reach Kumarghat. One Moulana (Muslim Scholar) lead them till Kumarghat and later hired three vehicles from Kailashahar’s Muslim dominated Northern region”, sources also added.
In suspicion of illegal and unlawful entrants in Indian territory, the State Police and BSF personnel held them. It is worthy to mention here that, state police also detained good number of Rohingyas couple of days back at Dharmanagar in North Tripura district and Khowai district.
