By Harsh Mander
It was May 6, 2025.
That fateful night, India was to launch missile strikes, sending airforce planes deep into Pakistan to target terror infrastructure, in response to the terrorist killings of 26 tourists on April 22 in Pahalgam in Kashmir.
In the national capital city of Delhi, more than 40 Rohingya refugees, including old and ailing women and men, were rounded up by the police. Their families were told that their biometrics were being checked and they would soon return.
But they disappeared. For three days there was no word from them. Their families were sick with worry. No officials would answer their queries.
Then three days later, a phone call came from their loved ones. The families gathered anxiously. The story they told was beyond belief.
They were first flown in an Indian Air Force plane to the Andaman Islands, then bundled into a naval boat. As one of them reported in a call that one of them recorded, “they bound our hands, our hands bled and [they] did not let us move our heads from up and down… They [then] threw us into the sea, they gave each of us a life jacket, with which we swam and reached the seashore…” Reaching land, to their horror they found themselves in Myanmar, the land from where the Rohingya had fled years earlier to escape genocide.
Two veteran human rights lawyers, Prashant Bhushan and Colin Gonsalves, stood before the Supreme Court a week later, on May 16, urging the urgent return of the deported Rohingyas, an end to future deportations and massive reparations.
But the judges of India’s highest court were unconvinced and unmoved. Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh described the claims in the petition as “fanciful”, “a beautifully crafted story”, with “absolutely no material in support of the vague, evasive and sweeping statements made”. Justice Kant scolded, “When the country is going through a difficult time, you come out with such fanciful ideas”.
They refused any relief for the desperate petitioners.
In the weeks that followed, however, investigative reporters from Article 14 and BBC News confirmed the truth of the stunning story that the Supreme Court had judged to be “fanciful” and “beautifully crafted”.
Thomas Andrews, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, described the deportation as “unconscionable, unacceptable acts”. “I am deeply concerned”, he said, “by what appears to be a blatant disregard for the lives and safety of those who require international protection. Such cruel actions would be an affront to human decency and represent a serious violation of the principle of non-refoulment, a fundamental tenet of international law that prohibits states from returning individuals to a territory where they face threats to their lives or freedom.”
But for the refugees trapped in Myanmar, and their loved ones back in India, nothing changed.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.