24 Rohingyas including 10 children and eight women were detained in Tripura’s Unakoti district. They were subsequently released as they were United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) card holders, the police said on Tuesday.
Unakoti district Superintendent Police Kishore Debbarma said that the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel detained the Rohingyas travelling in three cars who were coming from Jammu at Jiturdighipar check-gate on Monday evening.
Later, the BSF handed over the 24 Rohingyas to the police, who after verification of their UNHCR cards on Tuesday released them.
“The Rohingyas came to Kumarghat railway station by training via Kolkata and Guwahati from their refugee camp in Jammu. We can not arrest them as they have valid UNHCR cards,” Debbarma told IANS over phone.
The foreign nationals have no specific plan where they ultimately would go. Intelligence officials suspect that they are likely to go to Bangladesh and that’s why they came to bordering Kailashahar. On April 27, six Rohingya migrants, including one holding a UNHCR card, were held at Dharmanagar railway station in North Tripura district. Rohingya refugees often enter the northeastern states illegally from Bangladesh in search of jobs and better opportunities.
During the past two years, over 200 Rohingyas, who are from Myanmar, have been detained in different northeastern states by the BSF and other national security agencies.
Since 2016, over 8,60,000 Rohingyas fled from Myanmar to evade violence and sheltered in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh.
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