Amir, whose own citizenship was not in dispute, told me that he and Sahera knew no other country than the one where they lived and where their parents lived before them. Sahera, her face turned away from me, wept silently under the hood of her sari. Amir did most of the talking, speaking softly in Bengali.
The neighbors waited outside while I spoke to Sahera and her husband. If the Supreme Court also rules against her, no one can say what might happen to her. the Union of India will now have to be heard at the Supreme Court in New Delhi.
But the high court upheld the tribunal verdict, and the case of Sahera Khatun v. Sahera’s lawyer had appealed the tribunal decision with the high court in Guwahati, the seat of government in Assam. A folder thick with papers lay on a plastic table. The tribunal ordered the police to take her into custody as an “internee” until she could be deported.Īs I was led into a room with a dirt floor, neighbors began to crowd in, faces taut with wariness. The documents she submitted were considered inadequate and untrustworthy, as was the testimony of the village chief. She was unable to state when she was born, at what age she married or how old her parents and grandparents were when they first voted, the tribunal official noted. Sahera, on her lawyer’s advice, stayed away, as she was likely to be detained if the verdict went against her. In June 2018, the tribunal delivered its verdict. She was cross-examined by the official, as was the chief of the village she lived in.
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Over the years, with the help of lawyers working pro bono, Sahera submitted a series of documents, including land records, copies of electoral lists and a marriage certificate. It was the first of many such appearances. On the appointed day, Sahera and her husband made the two-hour journey in a crowded tempo to Foreigners’ Tribunal No.6, in the town of Barpeta. If she failed to make an appearance, the tribunal would declare her a foreigner and arrest her. Yet the summons required her to prove that she was a citizen of India and not an illegal migrant from the neighboring country of Bangladesh. Sahera had given birth to five children in Sukharjar and seen nothing of the world beyond these two villages and the temperamental rivers that regularly inundate huts and farmland there. She had moved there from Morabhaj, where she was born, after her marriage to a daily wage laborer named Amir. Sahera was living at the time in Sukharjar, a riverine village in the remote Indian state of Assam. One November morning in 2015, a 37-year-old woman named Sahera Khatun received a notice summoning her to a foreigners’ tribunal.
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