Nine Rohingyas Apprehended in Manipur

Moreh, June 1, 2019:

Nine Rohingyas have been arrested from Moreh town near the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur’s Tengnoupal district with fake Aadhaar cards, police said Saturday.

While addressing media persons, Superintendent of Police Vikramjit said that following a tip-off, local authorities apprehended four Rohingya refugees including two women from the Tengnoupal check post, for possessing fake Aadhaar cards on May 27.

The police arrested five other Rohingyas including three women from a hotel in Moreh town on May 28, the SP said.

The SP has said that investigation revealed that one Tahir Ali, a Rohingya, had married a local Manipuri Muslim woman and was running a trafficking operation of these 'persecuted' foreigners.

Ali was arrested from Sora locality in Thoubal district Friday, the police said.

All the arrested except for the ‘mastermind’ Tahir Ali had travelled from the state capital to the border town carrying fake Aadhaar cards, he said.

The arrested Rohingyas can neither speak Hindi nor English, leading to communication problems, the SP said, adding further investigation was on to find how they entered India and got hold of fake Aadhaar cards.

The Rohingya people are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar. There were an estimated 1 million Rohingya living in Myanmar before the 2016–17 crisis. By December 2017, an estimated 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.

Moreover, a report prepared by Indian security agencies has revealed that Rohingyas may now be making use of Mizoram’s border with Myanmar to enter India. The porous nature of the of border along the Northeastern region of India is suspected to have led to the influx of the Rohingyas who often cross over from Bangladesh and Myanmar into the Northeast.

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