বিনা বিচারে ডিটেনশন ক্যাম্পে আটকে রাখা চলবে না, দাবি প্রতিবাদী সভায়
All those in detention camps be immediately released, demand raised in protest demonstration at Silchar

October 21: Let all those who are kept in various detention centres of the state be released immediately. Their trial should be done in a normal manner in the court and not in Foreigners’ Tribunal. These and many other such demands were raised in thundering voices in the area near Khudiram statue on Monday evening.

A protest demonstration was convened to protest the death of Dulal Chandra Paul, a declared foreigner by the Tribunal. 64-year resident of Alisinga village in Assam’s Sonitpur district was declared a foreigner by a Tribunal in October 2017. He was then sent to the detention camp at Tezpur in 2017. On September 27, Paul was sent to Tezpur Medical College Hospital and then to Gauhati Medical College & Hospital (GMCH) for treatment. He died on 13 October with the tag of a foreigner at GMCH.

However, after his death, his three sons–Asish, Ashok and Rohit have refused to accept the dead body of their father. They categorically stated that they are not going to accept the body until the government declares him as an Indian citizen. His elder son Ashish Paul said, “The Foreigners’ Tribunal declared our father as a foreigner and then sent him to the Detention Camp. Now if he is a foreigner, why the government is handing over his body to us? How can we accept the body of a declared foreigner?”

During the protest demonstration at Silchar, candles were lit in front of a picture of the deceased Paul. Nine days have elapsed, but the state government has failed to convince the sons of the deceased to accept the body of their father. Since then the body is kept in the morgue. Speaking during the occasion, Prof. Tapodhir Bhattacharjee, former Vice Chancellor of Assam University said that we strongly oppose the move of the government in sending the 19 lakh NRC excluded persons to Foreigners’ Tribunal. He further raised the demand that the trail of this huge number of NRC excluded persons should be done in a full-fledged legal procedure.

Advocate Dulal Mitra criticised Prime Minister Modi and said, “In 2014, Narendra Modi promised to demolish the Detention Camps of Assam, but after winning the election, the union government instead of keeping its promise sanctioned crores of rupees for construction of more such camps. He also criticised several tricky aspects of the Citizenship Amendment Bill as proposed by the BJP.

Other speakers also demanded that government should have to bear the expenses of litigation on behalf of those whose names were excluded from the final NRC. Speaking to newsmen, social activist Kamal Chakraborty said, “Till the completion of the trial, all rights of such NRC excluded people/detainees in the cell should not be curtailed.”

Almost all the speakers praised the bold step adopted by the sons of the deceased Dulal Chandra Paul and said that we need to learn a lesson from them. They have ignited the fire of a mass movement against the injustice inflicted upon the people in the name of NRC, Detention Camp, Foreigners’ Tribunal and the like.

It needs mention here that Ashok Paul, another son of Late Dulal Chandra Paul heaped severe allegation upon the way his deceased father was treated at GMCH. He said that they were informed by the authorities at the detention centre that their father’s health is not good and so he was admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He, however, alleged that when they went to meet him at GMCH, they were pained to see his father kept in one of the veranda of the GMCH with no proper treatment.

Also Read: Another life lost: 64-year old man dies in Tezpur Detention Camp