Eighty-two-year-old Akol Rani Namasudra from Assam, was finally declared an 'Indian' on Wednesday, 11 May, three months after she received a notice asking her to prove her citizenship.
The declaration of citizenship itself, however, comes a decade after her 40-year-old son’s alleged suicide over a similar notice.
While campaigning for the 2014 Lok Sabha election in Cachar, Narendra Modi had said, "Arjun didn't die for himself but for the rights of lakhs of people in detention camps. Arjun Namasudra has sacrificed his life for them."
Despite Arjun Namasudra’s death being acknowledged by the prime minister himself, Akol Rani, a resident of Haritikar village, about 20 km from Silchar, was summoned by the Tribunal in February, based on a case first registered in 2000, which claimed that she had “illegally” entered India after 25 March 1971.
The Quint interviewed Akol Rani Namasudra after she received the citizenship notice. Watch the full video here:
Both Arjun and Anjali, Akol’s daughter, had received the notice in 2012. However, Arjun allegedly died by suicide out of fear of being arrested and sent to Bangladesh, his family said. A year later, his family appeared before the court and it declared him 'Indian' in 2013. Two years later, Anjali was declared Indian by the tribunal as well.
Speaking on the notice her mother received in February, Anjali said, “We had already gone through a lot because of what happened to my brother. We could not believe that after all that, after what the Prime Minister said, my mother would have to go through it again,” The Indian Express reported.
‘Not a Foreigner'
The Foreigners Tribunal (FT) in Silchar has now ruled that Akol was “not a foreigner” after she had successfully proved her case by “adducing cogent, reliable and admissible evidence.”
Fifty-five-year-old Anjali Namasudra added that local lawyers helped the family and “bore all the costs.”
Advocate Anil Dey, who appeared before the tribunal for Namasudra, said, “Apart from her name appearing in voters lists in 1965, 1970, 1977, she also had pre-1971 land deeds in her name,” The Indian Express reported.
On 31 August 2019, the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) was released – a list of Indian citizens living in the state. But the names of 19 lakh people living in Assam were excluded from the list.
Being excluded from the NRC list does not mean that the person automatically becomes a foreigner. However, to acquire Indian citizenship, the 19 lakh people have been made to contest their exclusion from the NRC at Assam's Foreigners Tribunals.
(With inputs from The Indian Express.)
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