By Arshad Ahmed
On October 7, when Dulabjan Begum came out of a Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) office in Assam’s Silchar town, her tears did not stop streaming down her cheeks.
“These are happy tears,” the 50-year-old told media who is a resident of Dayapur Part I, a village roughly a 40-minute drive from Silchar in the southernmost Assam’s Cachar district.
For Begum, the air she breathed that day in an otherwise kafkaesque atmosphere smelt of relief and freedom as the Foreigners’ Tribunal-3 in Silchar declared her Indian after 6 long years of struggle and agony.
The Tribunal member B.K Talukdar, while hearing her appeal observed, “Considering the facts and materials submitted and depositions in the earliest and the present detailed voters’ list of 1965, 1987 along with the new documents…voter lists are to be appreciated by me without any doubts.”
He added, “Given that my considered opinion is that the OP [Dulabjaan Begum] is a Citizen of India born out of Indian Citizens living on Indian soil.”
The judgement came six months after the Gauhati High Court asked the same Tribunal bench to review her case after she moved the High Court in 2018 against the tribunal’s order.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here .
