An official survey conducted on the directions of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has confirmed that there are over 6000 Rohingyas immigrants putting up at various places in Jammu district.
Besides Jammu, the other cities where Rohingyas have lived are Karnal in Haryana, Delhi and Hyderabad. There are an estimated 40,000 Rohingyas Muslims in different parts of the country. Pertinently, the home department, in a report tabled in the Assembly last year, had said there were 6,523 Rohingya (over 400 without UNHCR cards) living at 39 places in five districts of J&K.
Of the 1,517 families, 1,483 families are staying in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts alone.
The data has been released after the Special Branch (SB) of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) wing of the Jammu and Kashmir Police completed the process of capturing the biometrics of illegal migrants settled in Jammu.
Among other, directions regarding Rohingyas are:
- Capturing of biometrics for identification and de-duplication
- Not issuing Aadhar Card and other documents which may later help them claim Indian citizenship.
The MHA had asked the state government to identify each of the illegal immigrants and record their personal particulars (name, date of birth, sex, place of birth, father/mother names, address in Myanmar/some other country, nationality, etc.) and got signed by such illegal migrant or their guardian.
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Though many of these Rohingyas are registered with the United Nation Commission for Refugees, but their entry into India -and onward to various cities including Jammu -has been illegal.
The exercise of biometric capturing was kick started in the month of November 2018 and was to be completed in the middle of January, this year.
According to a senior police officer,
“Earlier, CID wing had completed details of the Rohingyas living in the outskirts of Jammu -Bathindi, Narwal Bala, Channi Rama and Talab Tillo, but the same was again kick started on District Magistrate’s directions”