Mother's whereabouts ‘unknown' after detention by Assam police, son knocks on Supreme Court door
Monowara Bewa, whose son's Habeas Corpus petition the Supreme Court has agreed to hear next week, lives in Khagrabari village in Dhubri district with her family and is among several people who the Assam police have detained since May 23 in a crackdown against people declared foreigners by the state's Foreigners' Tribunals.
Her son, 26-year-old Iunuch (Yunus) Ali, has alleged that she has been picked up for deportation, and her whereabouts since then are not known.
Bewa was declared a foreigner by an FT in 2016 and placed in detention in Assam's Kokrajhar. She was released on bail in 2019 following the Supreme Court's directions to this effect for those who had completed three years in detention.
The Gauhati High Court had upheld the FT order in 2017, and the family approached the Supreme Court through a Special Leave Petition the same year.
While the Supreme Court has agreed to hear her son's petition, back in Dhubri, her family remains in the dark about her whereabouts since she was detained on May 24.
'That day, she got a call from the Gauripur police station asking her to report with her documents. Since she goes every month because of her bail conditions, we thought they needed her for something related to that. She and her son went around 5 pm. They were made to wait there until late at night, when a senior official came to take her away, saying he was following instructions from higher authorities. The next day, we went to the office of the border police SP in Dhubri, but the in-charge there said he did not know anything. It has been eight days, and we still don't know where she is,' said her nephew, Maminur Hussain (37).
Bewa's neighbour, Jahanara Hussain (55), who is also a local women's leader who has been helping the family with the case, said that on Sunday, she received the link to a Facebook video that purportedly showed Bewa in Bangladesh alongside four others.
'It was circulated among people in the area on Sunday night. It is her in the video, but we still do not have any idea where she could be right now,' she said.
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