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The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and detention camps – at this time, India is debating the utility as well as the futility of these three things.
The CAB, NRC and detention camps are all intertwined, as one can lead to the other but ultimately they all end in a detention camp. Both the NRC and the CAB aim to identify who is an Indian and who will ultimately be declared an illegal foreigner.
People who are declared as foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunal of Assam or arrested by the border police in Assam on suspicion of being a foreigner end up in one of the six detention camps in Assam. These detention camps are not stand-alone facilities but are run out of the district jails in Dhibrugarh, Silchar, Tezpur, Jorhat, Kokrajhar and Goalpara.
All the people The Quint met with in the course of the documentary ‘Diaries from a Detention Camp’ have some connection with the Goalpara detention camp.
9-year-old Shweta’s father, Subrata Dey, died inside Goalpara Detention Camp on 26 June 2018. The postmortem said it was a heart attack. Just two months before that, Subrata had been arrested by the border police in Goalpara because he had missed eight summons from the Foreigners Tribunal.
Doubts still remain if Subrata was actually a foreigner. In 2005 a voter ID card was issued where his name was written as Subodh Dey. He was eventually marked as a ‘D’ or doubtful voter.
Till November 2019, 28 people have died in the detention camps of Assam, according to an answer given in the ongoing Parliament session.
Ravi Dey underwent a gall bladder surgery while he was serving time in Goalpara detention camp. But post-surgery he lost his hearing in one ear. He was released in August, 2019 following a Supreme Court order, which said declared foreigners who have spent over three years in a detention camp are to be released.
Ravi gave us an insight into life inside a detention camp.
The Supreme Court order has mandated that a detainee can be released after giving two sureties of one lakh each. His biometrics would be taken and every week he would have to report to the local police station.
But even these are tough conditions for people like Aatab Ali and his brother Habibur Rehman. In spite of being eligible for release, they are still languishing in a detention camp.
Almost 1,000 people are currently interned in the detention camps of Assam. The numbers are likely to go up because the NRC has left out almost 19 lakh people. And if they can’t prove their Indian citizenship they too may end up in these detention camps.
To tackle this expected surge in numbers of detainees, one of India’s biggest detention camps is being built in Matia in Assam, which is supposed to be able to accommodate 3,000 people.
Here's how the documentary was shot in Assam.
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