3 Rohingyas caught from Tripura, handed over to GRP

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMarch 19, 2024

Three Rohingyas were caught by a team of Railway Protection Force (RPF) of Northeast Frontier Railway from Badharghat railway station in Tripura’s capital city Agartala on Sunday. 

“A joint team of RPF and GRP, during a routine checking, detected suspicious activity of a group of people at Agartala Railway Station. On interrogation they could not produce any valid documents,” said an NF Railway official in Guwahati on Tuesday.

They have been identified as Abdul Rashid (24), Mohammed Yusuf (23) and Mohammed Hamid (23). A feature phone was recovered from them.

“During interrogation, they revealed that they entered India illegally and were planning to escape from Agartala by train number 13174 (Kanchanjunga Express). All of them were caught and handed over to the officer in charge of Agartala GRP Station for further action,” he said.

Officer-in-charge of Badharghat GRP station, Tapas Das said, “We caught them near the main entrance to the platforms and questioned them, during which they revealed they were Rohingya.”

“The group came to Tripura to enter Bangladesh but failed to do so due to intensified security in the light of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Later they tried to to leave Tripura. They had entered India via West Bengal eight years ago and had gone to Hyderabad,” Das said.

The Rohingyas who hail from Myanmar’s Rakhine State have faced persecution at the hands of that country’s military since the late 1940s. In 2016, the military cracked down against various Rohingya villages in the wake of a deadly attack on a Myanmarese Army post by rebels. 

During the 2023-24 fiscal, RPF has caught a total of 340 illegal migrants including Rohingyas and Bangladeshis from different stations under NF Railway.