Latest news with #Khatun
Time of India
4 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Assam headmistress arrested for disrespecting national flag at school
Guwahati: Police on Saturday arrested a govt school headmistress, Fatema Khatun, for allegedly folding the national flag with her legs on the school campus in the Samaguri area of central Assam's Nagaon. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The incident took place on Saturday morning as she alone was lowering the flag, a day after the flag lowering was scheduled to be done on Friday evening on Independence Day. She was arrested under Section 2 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971. The Nagaon CJM court sent her to 14-day judicial custody on Saturday. In a video, the accused teacher is seen placing the tricolour under her foot and attempting to fold it with the help of her knees after pulling out the flagpole from the courtyard of Gopinath Dev Goswami High School. Khatowal police station OC, Sanjib Bora, said that the accused teacher came alone to the school on Saturday morning and lowered the flag in an objectionable manner. "Yesterday, she hoisted the flag in the presence of students, but today she came alone at around 7:30 am, opened the school gate, and lowered the flag," he said. Police said that she arrived at the school early, before students, as the school authority forgot to lower the flag on Friday and was facing criticism from local villagers. She was in an awkward position as the locals arrived near the school campus to condemn the insult to the national flag in the govt-run school. Khatun told reporters that the school does not have any fourth-grade employee at present and had assigned the responsibility of lowering the flag to a clerk on Friday. "The clerk did not come on time, and that's why this lapse happened," said Khatun. She added that the grade four employee, who usually lowers the flag on such occasions, was on medical leave. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now A senior citizen of the area said that the headmistress rushed to the school after locals criticised the school authority for dishonouring the national flag. As per the govt rules, the Nagaon inspector of schools has sent her a show cause notice for the lapse. Officials at the state education department said that Khatun may be suspended for negligence in duty and bringing dishonour to the tricolour.
The Hindu
06-08-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Over 100 names ‘missing' from electoral rolls in Bihar's Jehanabad
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Jehanabad district in Bihar was infamously known as the 'flaming field' of central Bihar, with hundreds killed in caste massacres and India's biggest jailbreak occurring here in November 2005. Nearly two decades later, the district is back in focus - this time over concerns surrounding electoral rolls. Bihar Assembly election: Full coverage Following the publication of the draft electoral rolls on August 1, after a Special Intensive Revision (SIR), over a hundred voters from the minority community in Jafarganj locality of Jehanabad town have alleged that their names are missing. The issue has since become a key point of discussion among residents of the area, many of whom are poor marginal workers. One such resident is Ladli Khatun, 42, (EPIC No. RRS1130707), who claimed that her name has been omitted from the draft list. 'I was born in 1983 and have been exercising my franchise for a long time but this time I could not find my name in the draft voters list. How will I vote in the upcoming Assembly elections?' she said, standing outside her home which was hemmed between ugly concrete structures in a narrow, dingy bylane nestled cheek-by-jowl with unplastered walls and rickety corrugate roofs. The rainless monsoon day light barely reaches the footpaths crisscrossing the bylanes. Garbage, along with human and animal excreta, were strewn across the locality and residents were rummaging through it barefoot with their voter ID cards in hand looking for an official to examine their name, either online or on the list Also Read | Bihar leaders find SIR draft rolls 'difficult' to compare 'I don't remember exactly at which polling booth I had voted in earlier elections except that I had gone to the local school to cast my vote where in different rooms, different booths were camped,' Ms. Khatun added, as her ten-year-old son stood beside her in festive green Eid attire. Her EPIC card lists her husband as Mohd. Sallaudadin and her father as Mohd. Zarin Sah. 'All the four polling booths of Jafarganj are camped at the local government Nav Srijit Primary School,' Sarfaraj Alam, 65, a resident and social activist, said. Similarly, Mohd. Faiyaz Alam, 43, a casual worker from Jafarganj, was also unable to locate his name in the draft rolls. 'I've been using my franchise since 2010 at the local government school with this voter's card bearing EPIC No. RRS0599878,' he said, showing the card that mentions his birth year as 1983 and names his wife as Aashiya Khatun and father as Mohd. Kallu Alam. 'My father was a casual painter and so am I, but why did they delete my name from the list? Now, what should I do? Will I not be able to vote this time? Why?' he asked, mistaking this correspondent for an Election Commission official. Since the publication of the draft rolls, several residents in Jafarganj have been seen carrying their voter ID cards, searching for their names either online or in printed copies. At a temporary roadside structure nearby, a group of five residents sat with printouts of the rolls and EPIC cards in hand, discussing possible reasons for the deletions and how to get their names re-entered. 'It's a well-thought of design to delete name of most of the Muslim and Extremely Backward Class voters from the list. Everyone knows this [political design],' claimed one of the residents, who declined to share his name. 'What will you do by knowing my name?' he said with a puckish smile, as others chuckled and returned to scanning the draft list. District Magistrate Alankrita Pandey and Deputy Election Officer (Dy. EO) Poonam Kumari told The Hindu that the residents need not panic. 'They can get their names added through Form 6,' Ms. Pandey said. 'We'll hold special camps there to include names of genuine voters in the list and before this exercise we'll make the residents aware about the special camps through announcements on mics,' Ms. Kumari added. Local Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA Suday Yadav, also known as Kumar Krishna Mohan, was to visit the locality on Tuesday to meet 'unnerved' residents. 'I'm going there [Jafarganj locality] to meet those residents. It is strange how such a large number of voters' name have been deleted from the released draft list from a particular area where maximum residents come from Muslim community?' he said, while seated at a roadside tea stall outside the district collectorate. Mr. Yadav had defeated Janata Dal (United) candidate Krishna Nandan Prasad Verma in the 2020 Assembly election. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), another Opposition party, conducted a preliminary survey in the locality. 'Out of total 157 voters of four polling booths in Jafarganj locality of the town, as many as 130 are from the Muslim community and 27 are from other Hindu castes,' Ramadhar Singh, district secretary of the party, said. According to the latest electoral draft rolls in Bihar, the State has 7.24 crore electors - over 56 lakh fewer than the rolls prepared in January 2025. In Jehanabad district alone, 53,089 names (6.4%) were not found in the draft rolls released on August 1. As per the Election Commission, such deletions typically occur in cases where voters have died, are registered in more than one location, have permanently migrated out of the State, or are untraceable.
Hans India
25-07-2025
- Hans India
Gurugram cops step up drive against illegal immigrants
Gurugram: Anju Khatun, who says she is from West Bengal, was visibly terrified while recounting the ordeal she faced earlier this week while frantically searching for her husband at the holding centres set up by the Gurugram Police for illegal immigrants. She is not the only one. Several Bengali-speaking people are petrified by the police's ongoing drive to identify illegal immigrants. Many claim that the police were targeting Bengali-speaking people. According to police sources, under the drive, which has been going on for the past one week, more than 250 suspected people have been sent to the holding areas, where their documents were being verified.A senior police officer said a verification process was being conducted to identify illegal immigrants and dismissed reports that migrant workers from West Bengal and Assam were being targeted and detained. The drive has visibly affected sanitation works, with garbage piling up across the Millennium City. Most of the sanitation workers, who speak Bengali, have stopped showing up for work out of fear that they may be rounded up at the detention centre for domicile verification. 'My husband had gone to clean cars at a residential society in Sector 56 on Monday when the police took him with them. It was in the late evening that I got to know that he was in a holding centre,' said Khatun, a resident of a slum in Sector 56.'It was only after I reached the centre with our Aadhaar cards and other documents that the police released my husband. We are from West Bengal and have been staying in Gurugram for the past five years,' she said. Sources claimed that more than 20 people from Assam's Dhubri were kept in the community centre at Sector-10 by the police for five days before being released on Wednesday. Jahanur Islam, who has been collecting garbage in the city for 10 years, said the police nabbed them five days ago. 'We were not told why we were being held. All those nabbed collect garbage from houses around Kankarola and Panchgaon villages,' Islam said. The senior officer said police have identified eight illegal immigrants, suspected to be from Bangladesh, during the drive so far, and some more verifications were being done. 'We are following the Centre's guidelines on suspected illegal immigrants. We are not detaining them, but they are being kept in 'holding areas' till the verification process is completed, and, accordingly, we are letting them go,' DCP (Headquarters), Gurugram, Arpit Jain told PTI over the phone on Thursday. 'The only purpose of keeping them in the holding area is so that any illegal immigrant may not escape,' he said, adding that four holding areas have been set up under as many police zones in Gurugram. Police said these holding areas have been set up at community centres in Badshahpur, Sector 10A, Sector 40 and Sector 1 in Manesar. On Tuesday, the administration appointed naib tehsildars as in charge of these centres. 'Under the guidelines of the Home Ministry, four holding centres have been created. All basic necessities, including medical facilities, are being provided to them at the centres.
The Wire
18-07-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Poor Muslims, Uneducated, But Regular With Routine Police Visits: The People Assam Is 'Pushing Back' into Bangladesh
Barpeta (Assam): On May 25, Hazera Khatun (60) and Shona Bhanu (58) – both from Barpeta district in Assam – left their homes with a rare sense of hope. They were summoned to the Superintendent of Police's office in Barpeta and allegedly told that their long-standing 'foreigner cases' were about to be dismissed. 'They told us, 'You've been fighting this case for years. After this meeting, it will all be over',' Khatun said. 'We were tired and broken after fighting for many years – so we believed them. We thought Allah had finally answered our prayers," she added. That hope lasted only a few hours. By evening, they were locked inside a room, denied food or water, and then forced into police vehicles. They were taken to the Matia Transit Camp in Goalpara district, the largest detention facility in India for those that the government calls 'illegal foreigners.' In May 2025, the Assam government launched a sudden and sweeping crackdown on individuals it labelled 'illegal foreigners'. As part of the drive, the government detained and also deported those who were previously declared 'foreigners'. Most of them happened to be elderly Muslims of East Bengal origin. Both women were among the more than 300 people who were "pushed back" – a term increasingly being used by the government – to Bangladesh, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed in a legislative assembly session on June 9. Sarma said the 'illegal foreigners' were pushed back to Bangladesh under the The Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. On May 27 at dawn, 14 people including Khatun and Bhanu were taken towards the Indo-Bangladesh border and Kurigram district in Bangladesh. Personnel of the Border Security Force (BSF) forced both women to walk through jungle paths at gunpoint, they said. 'We had to cross the border because we were terrified,' said Bhanu. By morning of May 28, the women found themselves on no man's land in what they suspect was the Kurigram district in Bangladesh. 'We were left like animals,' Khatun said. 'We stood in knee-deep water, under the blazing sun, without food, medicine, or a place to sit," she added. Border Guard Bangladesh soon found them. They said the BGB detained them in an open field for the entire day, and then shifted them to a makeshift shelter. There, they were given a barebones meal. 'We were drenched, bitten by mosquitoes, and almost left to die,' Bhanu said. D-voters Khatun and Bhanu's nightmare began more than a decade ago, when they were each marked as D-voters or 'doubtful voters' – by the Election Commission. The D-voter category, introduced in 1997, allows electoral officials to flag individuals whose citizenship is suspected. Once marked as D-voters, individuals' names are referred to Foreigners' Tribunals (FTs) which have been set up across Assam by the government since 1964. FTs have often been reported to operate without transparency. Most of the people declared 'foreigners' by FTs are poor, illiterate, and Muslims of East Bengal origin. Spelling variations or missing documents can result in lifelong statelessness in the FTs' eyes. FTs in Assam had declared more than 1.5 lakh people 'foreigners' by the end of 2023. Among those declared 'foreigners', a major portion is uneducated women who were often married off before they were of legal age, making it difficult for them to establish a connection with their parents. Many Muslim families of East Bengali origin, however, have been living in Assam for generations. 'I had all my documents,' Khatun said. 'Land records, voter lists and labin naama (marriage certificate). Still, they called me a foreigner. I was born here. My parents and grandparents were born here.' 'I cannot prove myself a Bangladeshi citizen. But I can prove that I am an Indian citizen," Banu said. Khatun and Bhanu say that they had been declared foreigners years ago by the FT and were held in detention camps for over three years each. Their families managed to secure bail after appealing to the Gauhati high court. Both were released on the condition that they would report to their respective police stations once a week. The foreigners' tribunal at Barpeta. Photo: Kazi Sharowar Hussain. "Since her release, she has never missed a single date,' Khatun's daughter, Jorina Begum, said. 'Every Wednesday, no matter how ill she was or how bad the weather was, she went to the Barpeta Road police station." The 'push back' policy adopted by various state governments now bypasses India's legal and constitutional procedures. Lawyers say that no Indian law allows for 'pushbacks' – only deportation orders issued by the Union government, with diplomatic coordination and proof of nationality, are permitted. 'The Assam government is bypassing the law,' a Dhubri-based lawyer who chose to remain anonymous said. 'These are not deportations. These are illegal pushbacks that render people stateless.' Both Khatun and Bhanu spent at least two days in the makeshift camp in Bangladesh. After that, the Bangladesh government officially declared that the people found in different border areas are not Bangladeshi citizens. The women, along with 12 others, were eventually loaded into a vehicle again and brought back across the border — quietly, without any formal process or announcement. 'We thought they were going to kill us,' Khatun said. 'We were drenched, shivering, and starving. My chest hurt so badly, I truly thought I was going to die.' Both women were found on the highway near Goalpara on May 31 where the group split and Khatun and Bhanu were left behind. Their family members, with the help of local residents, rescued them from the spot where they had been dropped off. 'We received a phone call around 11.45 pm saying that two women had been found getting drenched in the rain,' said Bhanu's brother, Ashraf Ali. 'One of them was my sister' The Matia detention centre. Photo: Kazi Sharowar Hussain. Khatun's daughter said she had fallen sick and needed to go to the hospital for treatment. Khatun and Bhanu are still haunted by the incident. Khatun has grown physically weaker, while Bhanu has lost faith in people. 'I will die of a heart attack if I see the police once again,' said Khatun. Missing On the same Sunday, May 25, 70-year-old Karim Ali, a resident of Jania village in Barpeta district, also reported to the Superintendent of Police's office. A day earlier, his son Mannan Ali had received a phone call from the local police station, informing him that senior officials wanted to meet his father and that his "foreigner case" might be dismissed. Following the call, Karim Ali arrived at the SP office accompanied by his son. But no meeting took place. 'They told us to wait. Suddenly, I was pushed out of the gate, and my father was locked inside,' Mannan recalled. 'Later, a large police vehicle came and took him away.' Karim Ali had previously spent five years in a detention centre in Goalpara District Jail – before the Matia detention centre started functioning – after being declared a foreigner by a high court order. He was released during the COVID-19 pandemic following a Supreme Court directive to decongest detention camps. His wife, Saburjan Nessa, said he returned home severely ill. 'His health had deteriorated badly. He had been forced to eat rotting and low-quality food in the camp," she said. Since his disappearance, Ali's family has desperately been searching for him. They visited the Matia detention centre, but received no answers. The police officials only said, 'We know as much as you do.' With the help of a human rights group, the family has approached the Gauhati high court. His lawyers suspect that Ali, too, has been "pushed back" into Bangladesh. Kazi Sharowar Hussain (Kazi Neel) is a filmmaker, journalist and a poet from Barpeta, Assam. He heads Itamugur Community Media, a platform that amplifies the voices of the marginalised communities.
Scroll.in
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Calcutta HC asks Centre if there is truth to claims about Bengali-speaking persons being deported
The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday asked the Union government if there was truth to the claims that Bengali-speaking persons were being deported to Bangladesh, The Indian Express reported. 'Why suddenly in June?' the newspaper quoted a division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra as having asked. 'There is an uproar in the state that Bengali-speaking people are being deported.' Over the past month, Indian authorities have been pursuing a policy to 'push' individuals claimed to be undocumented migrants into Bangladesh. Many of those forced out of the country claim that they are Indian citizens. The bench made the remarks verbally while hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by the relatives of Sunali Khatun, a woman from West Bengal's Birbhum district who was allegedly deported to Bangladesh by the Delhi Police. Her husband, Danish, and their five-year-old son were also allegedly deported. The police had picked up Khatun and her family on June 20 from a settlement of Bengali migrants in Delhi's Rohini. According to two police statements seen by Scroll, the three were held in a detention centre. On June 23, they were produced at the Foreigners' Regional Registration Office in Delhi. Another family was detained along with them. A deportation order against the two families was issued by the FRRO the same day. According to the police, they were tipped off by an informer, who identified Danish as 'a Bangladeshi national'. The police also claimed that Danish had 'confessed' to being a Bangladeshi citizen. On June 26, they were 'pushed' into Bangladesh, according to a statement of the station house officer of the KN Katju Marg police station in Rohini and an order of the FRRO. During the hearing on Wednesday, the counsel for the Delhi Police told the court that Khatun's family was deported to Bangladesh in June, The Indian Express reported. The counsel noted that the matter was pending in the Delhi High Court and sought a dismissal of the habeas corpus petition. The petitioners had 'suppressed the facts in this [West Bengal] court', the counsel claimed. The counsel said that the Delhi High Court had been told that the family was deported on orders from the FRRO. Following this, the petitioners withdrew the habeas corpus application and filed a fresh petition in that court against the FRRO orders, the police said. The bench expressed displeasure at the non-disclosure of the facts by the petitioners, The Indian Express reported. However, it directed the Centre, the Delhi government and the West Bengal government to file affidavits in connection with the arrest of the family. The Union government was asked to file its affidavit by July 28. The court said that the petitioners must file their reply to the government's affidavit by August 4. The matter will be heard next on August 6. Meanwhile, Kalyan Banerjee, the counsel representing the West Bengal government, also sought an affidavit from the Centre on how many Bengalis had been detained and forced into Bangladesh, The Indian Express reported. 'Who will decide [about detention]?' the newspaper quoted him as having asked the court. 'The appropriate authority is not the police or constable. You cannot pick up someone just because they are speaking Bengali. There are procedures. These three-four cases are very alarming.' India has forced more than 2,000 persons, alleged to be undocumented migrants, into Bangladesh since the country launched ' Operation Sindoor ', a military operation against terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The legality of the 'push back' policy has been debated in India and internationally. Experts have told Scroll that the policy violated India's obligations under international law and customary international law. In June, four men from West Bengal, who had been picked up by the Maharashtra Police and forced into Bangladesh, were brought back on June 15. The Murshidabad Police in West Bengal had presented proof of them being Indian citizens.
