31 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants held at Guwahati railway station
16 Oct 2018
A group of 31 Bangladeshi nationals, who fled Bengaluru after working there for about three years, were on Monday detained at Guwahati railway station in Assam, pointing to the depth of the menace of illegal immigration into the country.
According to news agency ANI, the Bangladeshi nationals were apprehended while they were planning to return to Bangladesh via Agartala. They were detained from platform number 1 of Guwahati railway station.
The report said that the illegal migrants were working in Bengaluru in Karnataka for the past three years.
This comes just days after a senior Bangladeshi official told news agency PTI that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally assured Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina that people excluded from the National Register of Citizens would not be deported to the country.
This comes after a Supreme-court monitored update of the NRC undertaken to identify genuine Indian nationals residing in Assam. This also triggered a political controversy after the final draft list published on July 30 excluded more than 4 million people from the list.
While these 4 million Bangladeshi citizens had migrated to India illegally with the connivance of border guards and politicians wanting to increase votes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured his Bangladeshi counterpart that these illegal immigrants won’t be transported back to Bangladesh.
The Supreme Court has also said that government authorities must not take any coercive action against those excluded from the draft Assam NRC. The top court has also asked the government to prepare a standard operating procedure for further course of action.