Assam: Illegal immigrant deported to Bangla

Guwahati, Aug 5: An illegal immigrant, who contested the Assam Assembly elections in 1996, has been deported back to Bangladesh.

Official sources said here today that it has not yet been confirmed whether the Bangladeshi national, Md Kamaruddin, could proceed to his ancestral village Mulavi Bazaar or had been detained by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).

Earlier, he was deported twice, but managed to return and settled near Nagaon with an extended family and even contested the Assembly elections.

The Bangladeshi national, who had infiltrated into India and even possessed a Pakistani passport, was finally arrested on Saturday.

A judgment passed by Gauhati High Court last month had exposed the fact that he had managed to contest the Assembly elections in 1996.

''Md Kamaruddin alias Md Kamaluddin was tracked down at Kapahbari village under Morajhar police station and arrested. He has been already dispatched to Karimganj district on the Indo-Bangladesh border for deportation,'' SP Nitul Gogoi of Nagaon district in central Assam said over telephone on Sunday.

The Bangladeshi infiltrator had not only entered India illegally but also procured various documents to prove his Indian citizenship and managed to acquire land and property in Kapahbari village.

''He had filed his nomination for the No 90 Jamunamukh Assembly constituency in 1996, but later withdrew for unknown reasons,'' Mr Gogoi said.

A native of Bangladesh's Maulabibazar district, Md Kamaruddin is believed to have infiltrated into Assam in the late 1980s.

''He must have come in the late 1980s, because he married a woman in Nagaon district in 1990,'' the SP said.

The father of three sons and three daughters, his eldest daughter is married to a Gaon-Burrah (village headman) in a nearby village.

But the most astonishing fact is that even though the police arrested and deported him twice - first in 1998 and then in 2000 - Kamaruddin managed to sneak back into India almost immediately afterwards both times.

UNI