New Delhi: A 60-year-old woman has died in a detention centre in Assam, taking the number of those who have passed away at six such centres in the state since 2016 to 30.
The woman, identified as Robida Begum alias Roba Begum, had been lodged at the detention centre located inside the Kokrajhar district jail since February 2018 and was reportedly suffering from cancer.
News reports from Guwahati said that jail authorities have confirmed that she died on April 3.
Robida’s grandson Islamuddin told the Indian Express that his mother was also picked up by the state’s border police on the same day and has since been lodged at the Kokrajhar detention centre for women ‘declared foreigners’ ( by foreigners’ tribunals).
Islamuddin said he earned his living as a daily wager and that his family was too poor to hire a lawyer to challenge the Tribunal orders at the Gauhati high court.
Also read: The Tragic Demise of a ‘Declared Foreigner’ at Goalpara Detention Centre
“I could not even afford transportation of my grandmother’s body to Lumding (a town in upper Assam where he resides) and government officials arranged for it,” he told the newspaper.
Prior to Robida’s death, a 56-year-old man, Naresh Koch, had died at the Goalpara detention centre in January this year after a brief illness. Last year in November, the Ministry of Home Affairs had informed the parliament that 28 persons had died in the state’s detention centres in the last three years and 988 persons were lodged in the centres.
In July last year, the Supreme Court asked the state government to allow the conditional release of those persons who had completed three years of detention.