‘We are hiding in the forest’: Fear in UP’s Rohingya camps as Anti-Terrorism Squad arrests 74

The authorities said they were acting against people who had crossed the border illegally.

Jul 25, 2023 - 03:30

‘We are hiding in the forest’: Fear in UP’s Rohingya camps as Anti-Terrorism Squad arrests 74

Rabia Khatoon, 48, had finished her morning prayers when the police barged into her shanty in the Rohingya encampment in Allapur village of Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district on Monday. They asked for her husband Kullah Mian, 54, who was lying on the bed.

They nudged him with a baton and hustled him out of the hut.

Similar scenes were playing out in other shanties in the encampment.

Kullah Mian, his daughter-in-law and grandchild were among dozens of Rohingya refugees who were put into buses and taken away, Khatoon said. Among those detained, she said, was a pregnant woman.

The raid was part of a drive launched by the Anti-Terrorism Squad of the Uttar Pradesh Police against Rohingyas who were living “illegally’ in the state, an official statement said. It added that 74 Rohingyas had been arrested on Monday in raids on refugee camps in the districts of Mathura, Aligarh, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Meerut and Saharanpur.

Ten of the people detained were juveniles.

The raid was conducted on the instructions of the state government and the Director General of Police after the Anti-Terrorist Squad received information that Rohingyas were settling in the state after illegally crossing the border, the statement said.

The personal assistant to Director General of the Uttar Pradesh Police confirmed that...