Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Eighteen people, who were nabbed by locals in Tripura for allegedly being Bangladeshi infiltrators on Sunday night, has claimed they are Indians and furnished their Aadhaar cards as proof.

On Sunday, a group of youths of Adamnagar village in Sepahijala district nabbed the 18 people on the suspicion that they were Rohingyas and handed them over to the police. However, the accused have claimed they are Indians from Murshidabad in West Bengal and provided Aadhaar cards to confirm it.

The suspects will remain in judicial custody until November 6.

“The court has asked for the case dossier on November 6. On that day, we will seek their custody. If they are remanded to us, we will interrogate them,” Tripura inspector general (law and order), KV Sreejesh, told The New Indian Express.

Asked about their nationality, he said the court itself in its order had mentioned that prima facie the accused appeared to be Bangladeshi nationals and that there were incriminating materials against them.

“We are doing the verification of documents seized from them,” Sreejesh said.

Sepahijala superintendent of police, Sudipta Das, said they were trying to find out the nationality of the accused persons through UIDAI they showed.

Tripura has been on a high alert following the perception that the Rohingya Muslims could try and sneak in from the neighbouring country as lakhs of the Rohingyas had fled to Bangladesh in the wake of the violence against them in Myanmar.

A nine km stretch of Sepahijala’s border with Bangladesh is porous. Bangladesh falls between West Bengal and Tripura.

The incident comes at a time Assam’s BJP MLA, Shiladitya Dev, claimed that the Rohingyas were infiltrating into the state from Bangladesh via Tripura.

Sreejesh said Tripura police had no inputs about the infiltration of Rohingyas. He said the BSF, which guards the 856-km border with Bangladesh, would know it better.