Detained on suspicion of being Bangladeshi, Gujarat man reunited with family after 100 days

More than 100 days after he was picked up by the Ahmedabad Police on suspicion of being an undocumented Bangladeshi migrant, 51-year-old Liyakat Ali was reunited with his family on Tuesday.

His family had filed a habeas corpus petition in May in the Gujarat High Court, which was dismissed. A habeas corpus is a petition seeking a court’s directive ordering the authorities to bring a person before it to verify if they have been detained.

The family was in the process of approaching the Supreme Court as they feared that Liyakat Ali – an Indian who has lived in Ahmedabad for two decades – may have been forced into Bangladesh amid a wave of deportations by Indian authorities.

“We got a phone call from the police at 2 pm on August 5,” Muzaffarali Shaikh, Liyakat Ali’s brother, told Scroll on Thursday. “They said my brother had been found living under a bridge.”

Liyakat Ali was found around five km from the police station where he had been detained, living with other homeless persons and surviving on food donated by charitable organisations.

The search for Liyakat Ali

A native of Krishnapur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district, Liyakat Ali had moved to Ahmedabad about 20 years ago to live with his brother. Liyakat Ali suffers...

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