By Sujit Chakraborty
India and Myanmar on Thursday exchanged 61 nationals including two militants through the Moreh Integrated Check Post (ICP) in southern Manipur, officials said.
In another development, the security forces in West Bengal’s New Jalpaiguri have detained 14 Myanmarese refugees, who have fled from the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh and illegally entered into India.
An official of Moreh ICP told IANS on Thursday night that of the 61 people, aged 20 to 30 years old, 34 are Indian nationals including two extremists and 27 are Myanmarese nationals.
Most of these people illegally cross the borders and lodged in respective countries’ jails following their sentences awarded by the Indian and Myanmar courts.
The official on condition of anonymity said that of the 34 Indian nationals belonging to different northeastern states, two terrorists are members of Tripura and Manipur outlawed outfits and they were handed over to the Manipur police for taking legal actions.
He said that of the 27 Myanmar nationals, 19 were lodged in southern Assam and eight in Manipur jails following their detention after the illegal entry and stay into India.
An Assam police official said that the 19 Myanmarese with tourist visas entered India long back and they took jobs in a private company in Uttar Pradesh.
“When the 19 Myanmarese lost their jobs during the Covid-19 induced lockdown and expiry of their visa term, they tried to return to their country via Silchar (Assam)-Manipur route, but Assam police arrested them and lodged them in four months jail,” the official said.
Northeast Frontier Railway’s Chief Public Relations Officer Subhanan Chanda said that the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) troopers on Wednesday from New Jalpaiguri have detained 14 Myanmarese Rohingya refugees, who illegally entered India earlier. The detainees include eight women and two children.
The CPRO said that 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 Rohingya Muslim community.
“All of the 14 detected passengers were de-trained and taken to GRP thana at New Jalpaiguri. During interrogation it was found that all of them have fled from the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and entered India earlier. All the arrested persons were produced before a local court, which sent them to Judicial Custody,” Chanda said.
On and off, the Rohingya Muslims from their Bangladeshi camps entered northeastern states of India illegally in search of jobs and trapped in human trafficking.
Over 738,000 Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine state 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) – shares 1,643-km unfenced border with Myanmar while Tripura (856 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Mizoram (318 km) and Assam (263 km) share an 1,880-km border with Bangladesh.
(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)
