Thiruvananthapuram: Less than a week after the Railways sounded an alert, a Rohingya family of five were taken into custody by the Vizhinjam police here on Tuesday. The family – a husband, wife, their six-month-old daughter, and the two brothers of the wife, one of whom was only 11 - had reached the capital from Hyderabad on October 1. They were seen roaming around the coastal areas of Vizhinjam when they were spotted by the police on Tuesday morning. The police said that the family first approached the madrasas in the area asking for jobs.
“They said they had come here in search of jobs. What they say is that the remuneration in Hyderabad was very poor, and at times they were not even paid for their work. Apparently, they have been advised that wages in Kerala were better than in any other part of the country,” said Fort assistant commissioner J K Dinil. The men are good at digging wells. “That could be the job they were looking for here,” the Fort AC said.
He said that the family would be sent back to their base camp in Hyderabad on October 4. Cards establishing their refugee status have been found in their possession.
On September 27, the Railway Protection Force had shot off a secret missive to the Railway authorities in the state warning them of a huge influx of Rohingyan refugees. “Input indicates that huge number of Rohingyas are travelling from every corner of North East states and ultimately heading towards Kerala,” the secret note from the office of the RPF's principal chief security commissioner said.
The RPF secret note also listed 14 express and special trains on which the refugees were travelling. “All Rohingyan groups are travelling in groups along with their families,” the note added. The refugees are said to have boarded trains from three stations in Assam – Silchar, Guwahati and Dibrugarh - and three stations in West Bengal – Shalimar, Howrah and Santragachi. Some of the trains are bound for Chennai. The Railway was asked to get hold of the refugees and hand them over to the police. However, the police have not found the presence of any Rohingya in any of these trains.
Rohingyas, an ethinic Muslim community in Burma's Rakhine state, had fled to India in 2012, long before their mass exodus in August 2017. The figures put out by United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) shows that nearly 14,000 Rohingya are spread across six locations in India — Jammu, Nuh in Haryana’s Mewat district, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Chennai. It has given 'Refugee Status' certificates to approximately 14,000 Rohingyas in India; the remaining 3,000 are “asylum seekers”. India has also given some 500 Rohingyas long term visas with which they can open bank accounts and secure admission in schools.
