On Thursday, Supreme Court agreed to hear a plea to release and protect over 150 Rohingya refugees who were detained in Jammu.
Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde agreed to hear the application filed by a member of the Rohingya community, Mohammad Salimullah, represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Cheryl D’Souza, on April 25.
Salimullah, who is a petitioner in the Supreme Court against the deportment of Rohingyas, said that his application was based on reports in media outlets that Rohingya members had been detained in a sub-jail in Jammu. The application said, this follows the Union Minister Jitendra Singh’s statements two months ago that the Rohingya refugees would not be able to secure citizenship.
The refugees have been illegally detained and jailed in the Jammu sub-jail, which has been converted into a holding center with the IGP Jammu Mukesh Singh stating that they face deportation back to Myanmar following verification by their embassy, it added.
The application urged the court to release the detained Rohingya refugees immediately and direct the Union Territory government and the Ministry of Home Affairs to expeditiously grant refugee identification cards through the FRRO for the Rohingyas in the informal camps.
Further, it requested the court to direct the Centre to refrain from implementing any orders on deporting the Rohingya refugees.
The application said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees should be asked to intervene and determine the protection needs of the Rohingya refugees not just in Jammu but also in camps across the country and complete the process of granting them refugee cards.
The application said news reports started coming on March 7, related to nearly 150-170 Rohingya refugees in Jammu who were detained. Disturbing reports from the Rohingya families have come in that subsequent to a biometric verification of Rohingya refugees undertaken by the Jammu and Kashmir administration, some people never returned to the camps from the verification but were detained and jailed by the police, it added.
The application said official documents from the office of Deputy Commissioner of Jammu show there were 6,523 Rohingya in Jammu.
Inputs from The Hindu.