Almost six decades ago, the Brahmaputra River devoured Pashan Ali’s house at Charai Khasara village in south-western Assam’s Goalpara district. Now, a legal hurdle in the land through which the river flows is threatening to erode his grandson Aminul Hoque’s Indian citizenship.
On February 28, 2019, Aminul’s world came crashing down when the Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) No. 4 in Guwahati adjudged him a non-citizen. The 38-year-old had been staying in a rented house at Borbori, a rural area on the outskirts of Guwahati, working as a daily-wage labourer when the police came knocking in 2016. Later, he told the court that the investigating officer referred his case to the FT the following year “without fair or proper inquiry”.
Created under the Foreigners Act, 1946, the FTs are Assam-specific quasi-judicial bodies set up to address cross-border migration, prevent infiltration, and enforce the provisions of the 1985 Assam Accord, which ended a violent anti-foreigner agitation from 1979-1985. One of the key provisions is to detect and detain suspected illegal immigrants who entered the State after March 24, 1971, and deport them. Such people, detected by personnel of the Assam police’s Border wing or those marked ‘D’ (doubtful) by the Election Commission are referred to the FTs.
“Aminul was lost after the FT judgement. His family challenged it in Gauhati High Court, but he was shocked that he, the youngest sibling, was the only member of his family to be deemed a foreigner,” Khoiruddin Mollah, a family friend and a trader based in Lakhipur, a block headquarters in Goalpara district, says. He adds that Aminul was scared when, last year, news broke of people possessing valid documents being pushed into Bangladesh.
After the Brahmaputra eroded his land, Pashan Ali moved to Dobakura with his family in the 1960s. In 1973, he purchased a plot at Ghugudoba, about 4 kilometres away, where his son Mohiruddin and his family shifted. The land, according to the documents submitted, measured 2 bighas, 1 katha, and 5 lessas. In Assam, 20 lessas make a katha, equivalent to 2,880 square feet, and 5 kathas make a bigha.
The Ghugudoba plot is on the northern bank of the Jinjiram, a Meghalaya-origin river almost as “land-hungry” as the Brahmaputra, which it meets after flowing for 120 kilometres. Later, the family moved to Hashdoba, about 3 kilometres away from Ghugudoba.
The original land purchase deed was one of 15 documents Aminul submitted to the High Court in his defence. The bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Shamima Jahan did not find the deed and the other documents convincing enough to establish Aminul as an Indian citizen. The other documents included the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC) featuring the names of Aminul’s father, grandparents, and other family members; a 2017 school certificate from the government-aided Hashdoba Ancholik High School; and certified copies of voters’ lists from 1966 to 2015.
Family on the move
According to Aminul’s statement to the court after receiving the FT notice, his father Mohiruddin Sheikh, mother Foziron Nessa, grandfather Pashan Ali Sheikh, grandmother, and step-grandmothers appeared in the 1951 NRC as residents of Charai Khasara village.
The statement said that Brahmaputra River erosion in the 1960s forced the family to shift to Dobakura 56-57 years ago and enlist as voters from the village from 1966 to 1979. Thereafter, Mohiruddin moved to Ghugudoba and was enlisted in 1985 as a voter from the village along with his mother, wife, and other son Moyanuddin.
The statement further said that Mohiruddin shifted again to Hashdoba “for better livelihood” a decade after one of his sons, Hoque, was born in May 1988. Aminul’s name featured for the first time in the 2015 voters’ list as a 25-year-old from Hashdoba, along with his 21-year-old wife Sahida Khatun. Hashdoba is in the Goalpara district, about 165 kilometres from Guwahati.
A view of the Brahmaputra River in Assam.
| Photo Credit:
RITU RAJ KONWAR
The court did not take a “serious note of the spelling discrepancies” in the names of Aminul’s parents and grandfather in various documents. While his father Mohiruddin Sheikh became Mahruddin Sheikh, Mohiruddin, and Mohir Uddin; his mother Foziron Nessa featured as Nesa Khatun and Nesaton Bibi; and his grandfather Pashan Ali Sheikh became Pashan Ali, Pasan Ali, and Pashan Sheikh.
The court noted that the FT took into account the 1979 voters’ list, which contained nine names. Two of them — Joshimuddin and Ashiya Khatun — were not proved to be Pashan Sheikh’s family members. The tribunal also found discrepancies in the ages of some family members: Foziron Nessa was 25 years in the 1979 voters’ list, but 29 in the 1985 list (as Nessa Khatun). Moreover, the name of one of the six siblings of Pashan Ali, whom Aminul named in his oral testimony, was missing from the 1989 electoral rolls, while the 1997 voters’ list had three members — his parents and brother Fojor Ali.
The court also observed that the names appearing across three distinct villages — Dobakura, Ghugudoba, and Hashdoba — indicated that they belonged to three different family units. It was, thus, held that the family of Dobakura was different from the family at Ghugudoba in 1985 and the family at Hashdoba from 1997 onwards.
The credibility of computer-generated documents, specifically the 1951 NRC, was also doubted. Accordingly, it was held that the exhibited documents did not prove the existence of the petitioner with his ancestors, whose presence in India is established since January 1, 1966. It also declared that the petitioner had failed to prove he was an Indian citizen, under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946.
The plan to challenge the order
Aminul’s lawyer, Muij Uddin Mahmud, says the family plans to approach the Supreme Court. Aminul’s mother, wife, and brother declined to speak about the case, fearing that anything they say could hamper the chances of the Supreme Court overruling the Gauhati High Court’s judgement, as has often been the case with people declared foreigners in Assam.
His eldest brother Fojor Ali, however, says they are organising money to pursue Aminul’s case in the Supreme Court. “We have been told that contesting his case in New Delhi is expensive. Our farmland barely sustains our needs, and none of us makes enough as daily-wage earners. We shudder at the thought of losing Aminul if we fail to manage the money to go to the Supreme Court,” he says, citing the cases of a few people who were thrown into detention centres. Six of them were in as many central jails before they were shifted to the 3,000-capacity Matia Transit Camp, which was opened in Goalpara district in 2023. Others were pushed into Bangladesh after being declared foreigners.
A few days ago, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the 126-member Assam Assembly that 1,679 undocumented immigrants were repatriated to Bangladesh between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026. He also said that 31,789 illegal immigrants were expelled or deported from the State over the last 40 years.
“The sarkar (government) may not accept documents it provided in the first place, but we fail to understand how our youngest brother can be a foreigner when the citizenship of all others in the family, older or younger, has not been questioned,” Fojor Ali says. Aminul left Guwahati after the FT judgement to work elsewhere in the country after the High Court upheld the FT judgement on June 30. His acquaintances have a hunch that he could be either in Arunachal Pradesh or Meghalaya, possibly working in the hazardous coal mines that offer higher wages and a certain degree of anonymity.
Khoiruddin, who fought a case to remove the D-voter tag from his wife, said there was no guarantee the system would not come after Aminul’s “possibly marked” family, given that the District Commissioners have been authorised to order swift expulsion of “illegal immigrants” or people deemed non-citizens under the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, bypassing the lengthy FT process. In July this year, the Chief Minister said 67 of 193 declared foreigners were sent to Bangladesh over the last two years under the 1950 Act.
Mahmud, Aminul’s lawyer, cited the case of Dhubri district’s Sirajul Hoque, whom the Supreme Court set free in February 2019, two years after two English letters — ‘f’ and ‘m’ — sent him to a detention camp in eastern Assam’s Jorhat. An FT in Dhubri had declared him a foreigner in 2017 because of a mismatch in his grandfather’s name, which read Kematullah in some documents and Kefatullah in some others.
Office of the foreigners tribunal office in Barpeta district of Assam.
| Photo Credit:
RITU RAJ KONWAR
“A large number of documents that the Supreme Court accepts in various cases are surprisingly disbelieved by the High Court and the FTs for minor discrepancies. In the Sirajul judgement, the apex court observed that minor discrepancies in names and ages, and the shifting of residence do not constitute a major offence,” Mahmud says.
He adds that although the NRC is not proof of Indian citizenship according to Section 15 of the Census Act, the document in Aminul’s case proves that his father was present on Indian soil in 1951. It is also a legal document in view of various judgements of the Supreme Court, including the Shital Krushna Dhake versus S. Lal and Co. in 2018 and the Anvar P.V. versus P.K. Basheer case in 2014, where a computerised copy of any document has been accepted as a legal document,” Mahmud says.
The High Court, however, said in the June 30 order in Aminul’s case that the decision in the Shital Krushna Dhake case was “not an authority on the point that computer-generated printout from any official website would constitute an admissible evidence, as if the provision of Section 65-B of the Evidence Act, 1872 has been rendered otiose”.
Mahmud further says that the 1966 voters’ list was “direct proof” that Aminul’s grandparents were Indian citizens under Section 6(A) of the Citizenship Act of 1955, as amended up to date. “The 1970 voters’ list links Aminul’s father Mohiruddin and his grandfather Pashan Ali. Moreover, Mohiuddin is an Indian citizen because the cut-off date for citizenship in Assam is March 25, 1971. Similarly, the 1989 voters’ list links Aminul to his father, son of Pashan Ali who was an Indian voter in 1966. Aminul’s PAN is also a linkage to Mohiruddin,” he says.
The court, however, observed that the petitioner (Aminul) failed to show that all the “projected members of the family” — Pashan Ali or Mohiruddin or himself — were “not continuously together in all the voters’ lists of three villages of Dobakura, Ghugudoba, and Hashdoba. “It appears that to fill up the gaps, the defence of the petitioner is structured around the exhibited voter’s lists,” the court said, observing that Aminul could not prove he is related to Pashan Ali and Mohiruddin Sheikh. The court further said, “…it is well settled that PAN card and EPIC (Electors’ Photo Identity Card) are not proof of citizenship.”
More documents rejected
What Aminul experienced a few weeks ago, Mohela Khatun of Darrang district went through in September 2019 when the 27 documents she submitted failed the citizenship test in the High Court. One of these documents was a certificate issued by the Deputy Commissioner of Darrang on February 15, 2013, certifying her as an elected panchayat member.
The FT-4 in Mangaldoi, the headquarters of Darrang district, rejected almost all the documents, including a copy of the 1951 NRC featuring her “projected” grandparents. They also rejected a school transfer certificate from Japiya Government-aided High School in Bongaigaon district post-marriage to Jaidul Islam of No. 3 Dhoipur village in Darrang district.
The FT-4 said these documents were “liable to be discarded” as they failed to establish her linkage to her father, shown as Abdul Kader of Japiya village and Abdul Kader Mandal of Baraichala village, both in Bongaigaon district, in different documents. The FT-4 also rejected the documents connecting her to Desaruddin and Asiran Bibi, whom she claimed to be her grandfather and grandmother, declaring her to be a foreigner, “having illegally entered into India (Assam)” after the cut-off date of March 25, 1971, without any valid document from the “specified territory”.
A woman along with her children looks at the devastating course of Beki River which washed away their village in Barpeta district of Assam.
| Photo Credit:
RITU RAJ KONWAR
Mohela, now 46, served two years at a detention centre as a declared foreigner. Out on bail, she filed a review petition at the High Court in May 2025, seeking a re-examination of the order upholding the FT-4 verdict. “We exhausted almost all our resources in contesting this case, so much so that we have to think twice about visiting our lawyer in Guwahati (about 60 km southwest of Dhoipur),” her husband, resigned to a long haul, says.
Like Mohela’s husband, Rukiya Begum is bracing for a tough legal fight to prove that her husband Mainuddin Ahmed, a Hindi teacher at the government-aided Nanglichar Middle English School near Mangaldoi, is a citizen. Ahmed was sent to the Matia centre on June 29 after the designated FT declared him a foreigner despite the submission of 26 documents, including his appointment letter. “We are challenging the FT verdict in the High Court. Let’s see how far we can go to establish him as an Indian,” his wife says, from their house in Nijnagajan village in Darrang district.
