Imagine your entire family suddenly gets a notice to prove your citizenship. Your parents are proven bonafide citizens of the country.
You are illiterate and live below the poverty line. Your lawyer tells you, since your parents have proved they are Indian, you don't have to worry.
You make that one mistake, you stop worrying. The Foreigners Tribunal declares you an illegal immigrant. You get no respite from the High Court. You don’t have the means to approach Supreme Court. So for years you end up languishing in a detention centre.
Finally, on the intervention of civil rights group MY’s-FACTS, the family moves Supreme Court. The apex court orders a re-trial in the tribunal. But not before you have spent years in jail.
This is the story of Moinal Mollah, a Bengali Muslim from Barpetta. In 1998, the Superintendent of Police, Barpeta made three reference cases to the then Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunals, Barpeta.
On 06.11.03 the IMDT Tribunal, Barpeta declared that the father and mother of Moinal Mollah are Indian citizens.
The IMDT Tribunal did not take up Moinal Mollah’s case. But later, IMDT Act got scrapped due to the PIL filed by the current Chief Minister of Assam and then AASU ( All Assam Students Union) president Sarbananda Sonowal.
The reference case of 'D-Voter' Moinal Mollah was then automatically transferred to Foreigners Tribunal, Barpeta.
He appeared before the Tribunal on several occasions. His current lawyer says Moinal had earlier received wrong legal advice. The advice given was that as his parents has already been declared Indian citizens by earlier Tribunal he need not worry and didn’t have to appear before the Foreign Tribunal.
An illiterate Moinal saw no reason to not believe his counsel and never appeared before the tribunal again. The Foreigners Tribunal, on 16/02/2010 held that he was a foreigner.
Moinal realised his mistake and immediately filed a complaint against his counsel with Bar Council and also made him a party in the High Court. But the High Court dismissed the writ petition and ordered that Moinal be deported. In September 2013 he was arrested by the police and lodged in Goalpara detention camp.
"Moinal Mollah’s ancestors are citizen of India. His great grandfather, grandfather and father have been voting since Independence and their names feature in all voter lists. His grandfather even has a land document in his name from before Independence. These facts were placed before the High Court, they were not considered," his lawyer said.
That's when Aman Wadud, a city-based lawyer, and a Guwahati-based organization MY-FACTS came to their help. They collected money through public donation and moved Supreme Court. Finally in the second week of July, the apex court gave Moinal Mollah a second chance. He was asked to be present before the Tribunal within four weeks.
Aman said it was a big victory, adding that like Moinal, there were many poor and illiterate people who have been "wrongly" declared foreigners by the Tribunal.
More than 52,000 people have been declared foreigners by the Tribunals. While many of them are illegal immigrants, Aman argues that some had their citizenship stripped off over technical lapses.
The current government has shown a renewed resolve to make Assam free of illegal immigrants. The onus is now on them to ensure that many do not suffer, just because they share the same ethnicity as those held as illegal immigrants.