Thaindian News

Agartala, Nov 7 (IANS) Six Myanmar nationals arrested for illegally entering Tripura from Bangladesh were Monday sent to jail for 14 days, police here said.

There were three women among those arrested, all between the ages of 55 and 60. They told police after their arrest in western Tripura Sunday night that they had crossed over in search of jobs and to see the Buddhist sites in northeast India.

“Acting on intelligence information, Tripura police arrested the Myanmarese from a motorstand in western Tripura Sunday night. On Monday, the detainees were presented before a local court, which sent them to 14 days’ jail custody,” a police official told reporters.

After the 14 days in jail, they would be pushed back to Bangladesh.

“In search of jobs and to visit the Buddhist sites, they illegally crossed over to western Tripura through the unfenced Sonamura border from Bangladesh and attempted to leave for elsewhere in India via Guwahati,” the official said, quoting those arrested.

They told police officials that authorities in Myanmar were indifferent to the plight of the people living in the hilly areas bordering India and Bangladesh. “Intermittently, the Myanmarese Army have committed atrocities on a section of nationals, especially Rohingya Muslim communities,” the official said after speaking to the Myanmarese nationals.

Alleging starvation and torture, they said they had fled from Myanmar to northeastern Bangladesh and then come to India. They were not allowed to travel from one place to another within the country without permission from the army and could not even get married without a nod from authorities.

Over 50,000 Myanmarese have been living in different parts of neighbouring Mizoram, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh.

A Mizoram home department official said: “With the approval of the union home ministry, the state government has given temporary stay permits to these Myanmarese, who work in jewellery shops, vehicular service centres, shops, restaurants and cloth factories and at construction sites.”

Since the mid-1990s, over 225,000 Myanmar nationals have been sheltering in the Teknaf region in Cox’s Bazar district of southeastern Bangladesh.

India’s four northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh share a 1,643 km unfenced border with Myanmar.