The Army has said it has a “big heart” for Mohammed Sanaullah, a retired junior commissioned officer sent to a detention camp after being declared a foreigner, but can’t do much to help him at this point of time.

Mr. Sanaullah, a Subedar who retired as an Honorary Captain in August 2017, was sent to a detention centre for foreigners in western Assam’s Goalpara on May 28 by the Border Police, the very wing of the State police that had recruited the ex-serviceman as an assistant sub-inspector to detect non- citizens.

“We called his wife Samina Begum to our cantonment on Thursday to console her and assure her of our help whenever the need arises,” an Army officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Our officers tried to share the grief of an Army veteran’s wife,” the officer added.

“[There] is very little the Army can do at this juncture” as Mr. Sanaullah’s matter was now a legal case, the officer asserted. “We discussed his case with the Rajya Sainik Board too. They said he has to fight this out through lawyers. But we will definitely extend help during the course of the legal process, if needed,” the officer added.

Assam’s Directorate of Sainik Welfare (DSW) on Friday said it had “guided” the ex-serviceman to approach the Gauhati High Court given the confusion over Mr. Sanaullah’s identity and the record held with the National Register of Citizens. “The undersigned immediately contacted two good advocates and their help/assistance is being taken,” Brigadier (Retd.) Joshi Narain Dutt Ganesh Dutt, director, DSW, wrote in a letter.

Earlier, retired military officers had asserted the need for the Army to come to the ex-serviceman’s aid.

“Honorary Lieutenant Mohd Sanaullah arrested & sent to Detention Center for foreigners & illegal immigrants in Gauhati. Arrest follows an order of a Foreigners’ tribunal. Army needs to investigate & save the retired officer from harassment,” retired Brigadier V. Mahalingam tweeted, tagging the Additional Directorate General of Public Information under the Ministry of Defence.

Guwahati-based Brigadier (Retd.) Ranjit Barthakur termed what had happened to the honouraby discharged JCO as ‘unfortunate’. “If he was a Bangladeshi, how could he be serving the Army for 30 years and then the Border Police? The verification for Indian Army is extensively done by the State government and the Centre,” he pointed out.

A resident of Boko, about 60 km west of Guwahati, Mr. Sanaullah, 52, had received a notice to appear before the Foreigners Tribunal in 2018, about a decade after a sub-inspector of the Border Police had marked him as an ‘illiterate labourer’ who was born at village Kasimpur in Bangladesh’s Dhaka district.

The case against Mr. Sanaullah that the border wing referred to the Foreigners Tribunal in 2008 also contended that he had never cast his vote. But the retired JCO, his lawyer said, had been voting since 1989.