‘Bangladeshi’ teacher in Assam madrasa expelled

HUNT ON Cops said Maqsood Alam Dewan and his wife are at large

The BJP-led Assam government has fired a madrasa teacher, six years after a foreigners’ tribunal declared him a Bangladeshi. Police said the man, his wife and children are absconding.

In an order issued a few weeks ago, the director of madrasa education dismissed Maqsood Alam Dewan, who was an assistant teacher at Telahi Islamia Senior Madrasa in Morigaon district.

The madrasa is situated about 75km east of Guwahati.

“A case was initiated against Dewan and his wife in 2007 on suspicion that they were not Indian citizens. They approached the Gauhati high court after a foreigners’ tribunal adjudged them Bangladeshis in 2010, but the high court upheld the tribunal’s verdict in October last year,” Swapnaneel Deka, Morigaon district superintendent of police, said.

“Dewan and his wife have been absconding since the high court ruling. We are hopeful of catching them if they are holed up anywhere in the district,” Deka said.

Dewan’s was one of more than 2.62 lakh cases pending with 100 foreigners’ tribunals — up from 36 last year — across Assam.

A few, declared Bangladeshis under the Foreigners’ Act of 1946, have been deported, while about 300 people are in detention camps awaiting deportation.

In January this year, 17 people kept in such a detention camp in southern Assam’s Silchar were deported to Bangladesh.

These 17 were among 54 people from Bangladesh and Myanmar who were caught after illegally entering India during the past few years.

Last year, on October 13, southern Assam officials deported 10 Bangladeshis.

This followed bilateral meetings between the two governments in 2015 — first in January at Silchar and then in October at Srimangal in Bangladesh’s Maulvibazar.

In minority-dominated areas, judges of foreigners’ tribunals trying cases of D-voters (doubtful voters) have been assaulted at times. On February 15, a group of 20 lawyers assaulted judge Ajoy Phukan in western Assam’s Dhubri following an argument over a judgment in a D-voter case.

Some of the lawyers were later arrested. “The government needs to take a serious view of such assaults and ensure protection of judges in sensitive areas with a sizeable number of people of suspect nationalities,” Upamanyu Hazarika, a senior Supreme Court lawyer and convener of an anti-infiltration front, said.