Keep Rohingya refugees confined to their designated camps: Centre to states

The Narendra Modi government has asked Jammu and Kashmir and other states to keep Rohingya Muslims confined to their designated camps and not issue any kind of identity cards to them.

The Centre has also sought their personal particulars, including biometric details, so that it can share the data with Myanmar for their likely repatriation, according to a report published in the Times of India.

“The home ministry has written a letter to the chief secretary of J&K government and highlighted that some of the Rohingya refugees who entered India illegally pose a threat to national security,” the English daily quoted sources as saying.

In the letter, the ministry also added that “some of Rohingya Muslims were involved in illegal activities such as fraudulent procurement and/or fabrication of Indian identity cards — PAN, voter IDs etc — money laundering, crimes and other anti-national activities.”

The similar letter was also sent to other states. According to an estimate by security agencies, there are as many as 40,000 Rohingya Muslims living across country.

Of the total 40,000, a large number of them are living in multiple camps set up across Jammu. There were some 3,000 Rohingya refugees in Hyderabad, 1,114 in Mewat (Haryana), 1,200 in western Uttar Pradesh, 1,061 in Delhi (Okhla) and 400 in Jaipur.

The security agencies have noticed that they are now making efforts to shift to other South Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.

“Of late, some attempts by Rohingyas to move to states like Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have come to notice. There has also been new influx of immigrants into Jammu, Hyderabad, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands,” an intelligence officer was quoted by the newspaper as saying.