The first batch of at least 68 “foreigners” were moved to a newly built “detention centre” — now officially known as ‘transit camp’ — at Goalpara in Assam on Friday, senior government officials told The Indian Express. This marks the beginning of a proposed phase-wise transfer of “foreigners” to the Matia Transit Camp, 150 km from Guwahati.
The camp is the state’s first centre to exclusively house “illegal foreigners”, built as per guidelines laid down by the Centre. Until now, the detainees have been lodged in six “detention centres” across Assam — all inside jails.
Government sources said those who have been moved to the centre include both people declared “foreigners” by Foreigner Tribunals in Assam as well as those convicted by judicial courts for violating visa provisions.
“Sixty-eight people, which includes 45 men, 21 women and two children, have been moved. They were detected as foreign nationals,” said Barnali Sharma, Inspector General of Prisons, Assam.
Of the existing six ‘detention centres’, two are in district jails (Kokrajhar and Goalpara) and four in central jails (Tezpur, Silchar, Dibrugarh and Jorhat). According to state government data, as of September 2022, the six centres together held 195 detainees. In 2021, in a “a bid to humanise detention centres”, the Assam government changed the nomenclature to “Transit Camp for detention purpose”.
The Matia Transit Camp, nestled between farmlands and forest, occupies 20 bighas, and was built on a budget of over Rs 46 crore, with a capacity to house “up to 3,000 illegal foreigners”.
“The infrastructure is ready and a skeleton staff is in place. For those people who are moving, they will have whatever facility is needed… the district and police administration provided escorts for the movement,” Sharma (IG, Prisons) told The Indian Express.
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The move to transfer the detainees follows an order by the Gauhati High Court in November last year directing the government to make the Matia camp operational. The court order was in response to a batch of habeas corpus petitions, which challenged the detention of convicted and declared foreign nationals inside prisons/jails of Assam. Challenging the notifications by which jails were converted into detention centres, the petitions sought the release of the detainees. The petitions were filed in 2020 by a team of lawyers and activists, facilitated by Studio Nilima, a research collective.
The government has often been criticised for the poor living conditions in the six jails, where the detainees were lodged.
Since November 2022, the Gauhati HC has been urging the government to shift the people to Matia. On November 17, a bench of then Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court R M Chhaya (now retired) and Justice Soumitra Saikia had said that the transit camp was “ready for habitation”, and directed the state government to make “temporary arrangements for medical, para-medical and security staff”.
Senior government advocate D Nath then told the court that “medical facilities as well as the required security arrangements were” yet to be made.
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During another hearing, on November 29, Justice Chhaya said that the detainees should be shifted before December 15, 2022. In response, Advocate General of Assam D Saikia said that while the state government had taken a “conscious decision” to make the Matia Transit Camp operational, it wanted “more time to deploy necessary security personnel”. The following hearings, on December 20 and January 27, were adjourned. The next hearing is slated for February 28.
A Home department official, on condition of anonymity, said that the delay in shifting the detainees was because they hadn’t hired staff to run the camp, though the building was ready. “The premises has a school, a creche and medical facilities. We had to create posts for all these facilities…that is why it took time,” he said, adding that the government hired from different departments to put together the staff to make the centre operational.
Activists in Assam have criticised the government’s move, saying detention centres are meant for “convicted foreigners”. However, many of the people who are being shifted are only “declared foreigners” (declared as such by Foreigners Tribunals), who can appeal to higher courts to prove their Indian citizenship, and possibly get their name cleared. They said that shifting the “declared foreigners” to the centre at Matia would amount to their indefinite incarceration, as there exists no bilateral framework for deportation to Bangladesh.
The number of detainees at these centres have gone down over the years following Supreme Court interventions — in 2019, the apex court ordered that ‘foreigners’ who have spent more than three years in detention could secure conditional release on the fulfilment of certain conditions. In 2020, to prevent congestion in jails due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the SC ordered conditional release on bail of those ‘foreigners’ who had completed over two years in jail.
