By IANS,
Agartala : Five Myanmarese nationals were arrested in this Tripura capital after they sneaked into the northeastern state from Bangladesh, police said Sunday.
Acting on a tip-off, the Tripura police detained the five members of a Myanmarese family at the Agartala railway station Saturday night after they illegally crossed over to western Tripura from Bangladesh and attempted to leave for Guwahati in Assam by train.
“We are interrogating the head of the foreign nationals Abul Kasem, 60, and shall decide this weekend about pushing them back into Bangladesh,” said senior police official Mihir Roy.
Roy told IANS: “The five Myanmarese nationals, including four women, recently fled from the refugee camps at Teknaf region of Cox’s Bazar district (in Chittagong) in southeast Bangladesh. They entered into the Indian territory through western Tripura two days back.”
“During preliminary questioning, Abul Kasem told the police that they tried to go to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh via Guwahati to find jobs. One of their close relatives has been living in Saharanpur,” the police official said.
Since mid-1990s, over 225,000 Myanmar nationals have been sheltering in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh. They are believed to have taken shelter in Bangladesh to escape religious oppression by the Myanmarese government.
India’s four northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh together share a 1,643-km unfenced border with Myanmar.