By Arshad Ahmed
Guwahati, Assam: It was another day of navigating the fear of being arrested for 46-year-old Monowara Khatun.
Since she was declared a “foreigner” in 2022 by a Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) in her home district of Barpeta, some 90 km west of Assam’s capital, Guwahati, her family of five has rarely breathed relief.
First established in 1964, the hundred Foreigner Tribunals—that only exist in Assam—are quasi-judicial bodies that determine a person’s citizenship status.
Khatun’s fear, however, was soon realised.
In the early hours of 20 December 2024, hours before her case was to be heard in the morning before the Gauhati High Court, the Barpeta police arrived at her home in the riverine Satrakanara village to arrest her.
“She was taken away to the local police station almost instantly, leaving no time for our three children to say goodbye,” Asur Uddin, Khatun’s husband, said over the phone.
The same day, Khatun, along with 23 others, was sent to the sprawling transit camp at Matia, on the south bank of the Brahmaputra river in Goalpara district, which lies on the south-western border of Barpeta, according to a government affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on 3 February 2025.
The “transit camp”—a detention facility that houses “declared foreigners” and “illegal immigrants” until they can be deported—is India’s largest detention centre, spread across 25 bighas (roughly 16 acres) of land, since it opened in January 2023.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.