Guwahati: Six Rohingya Muslim refugees were detained in Tripura’s Dharmanagar area, about 192km from capital Agartala.

Five of those arrested are minors, and they were all planning to head to Assam in search of jobs.

Dharmanagar railway police official Nanda Lal Baidya told News18, “We found them moving around the railway station in a suspicious manner. After interrogation, it was confirmed they entered from Myanmar. They have been handed over to the Dharmanagar Police Station.”

The six refugees have been identified as Ibrahim Alam (17), Mohammad Jahangir Alam (17), Mohammad Ashan (15), Nur Fatama (16), Jhana Tara (14) and Dilwara Begum (27).

Jahangir Alam and his friends had been camping in Tripura since past eight days. The UNHCR card holder asked in fluent Hindi, “Where else do we go? In Myanmar, they threaten to slaughter us if we don’t leave. In India, we are held as infiltrators.”

Jahangir Alam worked in Hyderabad for a while. Sources said he had crossed over to India from Bangladesh almost seven times.

Both Centre and the state governments in Assam and Tripura face a daunting challenge to check influx of Rohingya Muslims into India from Bangladesh. In September last year, four Rohingyas were pushed back into Bangladesh by the BSF along Indo-Bangla border in Tripura. Eight other Rohingyas were held in Tripura in November 2017.

Thousands of Rohingya refugees have sought shelter in countries neighbouring Myanmar, escaping what the United Nations calls “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. An estimated 45,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar have entered India since 2012 while more than 6 lakh fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, according to a report in November 2017.

(With inputs from Panna Ghosh)