Assamese woman who went missing after May crackdown on ‘foreigners’ found in Bangladesh

A 68-year-old Muslim woman from Assam, detained by the police in May, has been found in Dhaka, Bangladesh, her family told Scroll on Friday.

A BBC Bangla crew spotted Sakina Begum in Mirpur, a crowded residential locality in Dhaka, and contacted her family.

Begum, a resident of Sonpur village in Nalbari district, was among the hundreds taken into police custody in May amid a crackdown on declared foreigners.

Typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, declared foreigners are those who have failed to prove that they are Indian citizens before the state’s foreigners tribunals.

Many declared foreigners detained in May were taken to the border with Bangladesh and forced to cross over, often at gunpoint. Their families discovered they were in Bangladesh when videos surfaced showing them there.

Begum’s family, however, had been unable to trace her for four months. “We did not have any contact with her after the police took away,” her daughter Rasia Begum told Scroll. “In the last four months, we went to Matia detention centre three times, but they said my mother was not there.”

The Matia transit camp in Assam’s Goalpara district is India's largest detention centre that houses undocumented migrants and refugees.

“We only got to know recently when a news team came to our...

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