Woman picked up as B'deshi due to mistaken identity freed

By our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, July 22: A woman, who had been picked up on November 29, 2016 as a Bangladeshi and put in the detention camp due to mistaken identity, was released following an order from the Gaihati High Court on July 11, 2017. The woman is Marzi Bibi alias Marzi Begum, wife of Kadre Ali Paramanik of village Fofonga Part 1 under Agia police station in Goalpara district.
The incident came to the notice of the Assam State Jamiat Ulama that moved the high court and rescued the woman from the camp she had been in. It was a case of mistaken identity. The Marzi which the police have been searching has children. However, the Marzi picked up by the police is childless.
Talking to the media on Saturday, State Jamiat president Badruddin Ajmal and another office-bearer Aminul Islam said: “Marzi was picked up at gunpoint on the midnight of November 29, 2016. A team of police, including two women constables, knocked the door of Kadre Ali. When the door was opened, the police gagged Marzi and kept her husband under control by showing pistols. They took her away saying that she’s a Bangladeshi. We moved the high court and got justice. Now she’s ready to move the court against the harassment she had been meted out for over eight months.”
Ajmal said: “How come the police pick up a woman without relevant documents or proofs to identify if she’s the very person they are on the lookout? Such incidents of harassment in the me of detection and deportation of Bangladsshis are on the rise in the State. The woman they police want is a mother of children, but this woman is childless. We also want that all Bangladeshis should be deported from India in accordance with the Assam Accord. However, in doing that no genuine Indian should be harassed.”
Ajmal further said: “I did let the Prime Minister know such harassment in the me of detection of Bangladeshis. The Prime Minister then told me to inform him of any such incident in Assam. Now I’m equipped with a proof. I’ll let him know this. Such incidents are taking place in the State in a planned way. The voter lists in minority-domited areas in Assam are littered with mistakes in addresses of people. This is being done in a planned manner. Such mistakes will surely land those people in troubled waters to prove their citizenship.”
When asked as to why such incidents do take place in such a planned way, Ajmal said: “Many champions of Hindutva, including former Assam Governor SK Sinha and a former Union minister, are in record saying that Assam has lakhs of Bangladeshis. However, the process of NRC update has proved that most of such people have produced valid documents in support of their citizenship. In order to prove their earlier statements as true, such leaders are out to create problems for a section of minority people in the State. The harassment on the pretext of detection and deportation of Bangladeshis is going on in the State like a flood wave.”
Marzi Begum, who was present at the press meet, also briefed the harassment she had to tolerate. On political front, Ajmal said: “None of AIUDF MLAs voted for the NDA candidate in the just-concluded Presidential election. The Congress has many RSS/BJP people as MLAs. They might’ve done the mischief. It’s known to all that many Congress MLAs joined the BJP. In Manipur, Goa and Gujarat also many Congress MLAs voted for the NDA candidate in the presidential poll. The Congress faces such incidents when it’s not in power. The party MLAs and leaders do join the ruling parties.”