‘Tortured Like Criminals’: Rohingya Refugees Reveal Chilling Details of Police Abuse Amid Deportations

 New Delhi: On February 26, over a dozen Rohingya refugees from Hastsal village in Uttam Nagar, Delhi, were taken to the Dwarka dossier cell (a specialised unit of the police to manage files or dossiers on refugees) for fingerprinting. During the process, the individuals were allegedly harassed. They were all allotted their individual e-prison numbers and once their fingerprints were registered, they were sent back home.

Nothing further happened until May 3, when about 14 police personnel visited Hastsal for the verification of the listed people and took photographs of them.

On May 6, the individuals were asked to report to the police station again under the pretext of verification, saying that there was a fault in their biometrics and that they needed to be fingerprinted again.

From there, they were escorted by four or five police personnel to the Dwarka dossier cell. Upon their arrival there, approximately 15 personnel from other departments surrounded them, some armed with rods.

These were among the first batch of nearly 40 Rohingya refugees deported to Myanmar this month.

Meanwhile, the same morning, more than 12 police officers arrived in the Vikaspuri area of Delhi, searching for Rohingya individuals. Some Rohingya refugees were taken from the area earlier too, but their location remains unknown.

At least three Christian Rohingya individuals were taken to the Vikaspuri police station and later transferred to the Rajouri dossier cell in the Inderlok area, from where they were taken for a medical checkup. Their families could not contact them anymore because their phones were switched off.

During medical checkups, refugees have allegedly been subjected to checks for scars and identification marks, while women have been allegedly forced to undergo pregnancy tests.

After this, they were transferred back to the Rajouri dossier cell, where other detainees were being held. There, they were informed that their fingerprints would be taken again. The men also allegedly faced physical harassment.

On the night of May 6, three more Christian families and several Muslim individuals, including children and women – all of them Rohingya – were detained at the Vikaspuri police station. While the women and children were allowed to go home later in the night, the family heads were still kept in detention.

The next day, one of the detainees made a brief 15-second phone call to inform their family members that they had been arrested and were being taken to the airport for deportation to Myanmar.

No one was even given the time to wear formal clothes or gather their belongings before being taken.

On May 9, police visited the detainees’ homes to verify their addresses and instructed their remaining family members to remain indoors. The family members alleged that they were constantly monitored closely, even while using the restroom. Some refugees were taken to the airport that night to be deported to Myanmar.

A Rohingya Christian couple who were deported on May 9. Photo: By special arrangement

The Wire visited Uttam Nagar on May 17, where it met some Christian Rohingya refugees who complained of constant torture and physical abuse by the police.

Joy (name changed to protect identity), one of the individuals, alleged that he was beaten, tortured and pulled by his hair. He alleged that they had been detained illegally.

On May 8, at approximately 8 pm, more than 15 police officers arrived in the Uttam Nagar area, searching for two Rohingya refugees, he said.

Joy was at a hospital with his wife, who had just suffered a miscarriage and undergone a womb cleaning procedure. Despite his wife’s critical medical condition, he was forced to leave her alone in the hospital after receiving repeated phone calls from his landlady, who informed him that the police were looking for him. He was instructed to report to the Mayapuri police station.

“They [the police] asked me to take off all my clothes and beat me repeatedly. After that they made me sit in a squatting position, asked me to straighten my hands and stay in that position so they could beat me on the thighs. Then they made me stand on my legs which had, by then, started paining.

“Then they said, ‘Now we'll count to 20. You have to stand still. If you move or sit, we'll beat you. I could rarely go up to five … and then they beat me again; they again started counting from one and so on,” Joy said.

When the police could not locate the second refugee, also a male, they threatened his wife, who had no knowledge of his whereabouts as he was away for work, and told her she would be detained and disallowed from leaving until she cooperated and revealed his location.

The bruises and injuries on a refugee’s body. Photo: By special arrangement

Later that night, the second refugee returned home and was immediately apprehended by the police. He was first taken to the Mayapuri police station, where he was allegedly subjected to physical abuse and brutality. He alleged that he was beaten so severely with an iron rod on his foot that he lost consciousness after the third strike.

Another elderly detainee who was detained at the Mayapuri police station the next day also alleged harassment and torture.

‘No information’

When The Wire asked Rajvir Singh, the station house officer (SHO) of the Vikaspuri police station, regarding the allegations, he denied them. “We don’t have any information on this,” he said.

In the case of Mayapuri police station, The Wire spoke to inspector Mahender Lal who said that SHO Mukesh Moga had been transferred in January. The inspector also denied claims of torture and beating by the police, and went on to even deny they had any Rohingya deportees at the station in recent days.

“We only had Bangladeshis who were brought into the station as part of the ‘deportation drive’. I don’t know about Rohingyas, will have to check records,” he said.

A phone call

On the morning of May 9, the detained Rohingya refugees received an international phone call from Myanmar, from some people who had been deported in the first phase on May 6. This is what the callers told their families in India, as recounted by a refugee:

“We were taken to Port Blair, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, aboard an army aircraft. Later, we were forcibly put onto naval ships with our hands tied and eyes blindfolded. We remained in that condition for the entire journey. We were tortured aboard the naval ships, beaten brutally and interrogated. We were accused of involvement in the Pahalgam terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir. When we insisted that we were not involved, they told us we were pretending and disguising ourselves.

We were treated very badly. They used abusive language, and the women among us were subjected to sexual harassment and other forms of mistreatment.

Then, we were thrown into international waters near the border area of Thailand. A navy officer told us that someone would come to rescue us, but no one came. Before the deportation, we were asked whether we would prefer to be sent to Myanmar or Indonesia. We chose Indonesia. However, when we arrived, we initially thought we had reached Indonesia, but later realised we were actually in Myanmar.”

“We were only able to speak with them for a couple of minutes in the morning. When we attempted to call the number from which we received the call, we were informed that they had been taken away by a group. However, it was not specified whether this group was the Arakan Army or the Myanmar military,” the refugee told The Wire.

The Arakan Army is a militia primarily comprising the predominantly Buddhist Rakhine ethnic group, which has persecuted Rohingyas and continues to forcibly recruit people from the community. The military’s persecution of Rohingyas prompted hundreds and thousands of them to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.

‘Beaten by the police’

The families of the refugees who were detained at the Vikaspuri police station on the night of May 6 were later released. However, the heads of the families remained in detention and on May 8, they were taken to an undisclosed location, where they were allegedly beaten up.

An image of the resulting bruise from alleged police beatings on another Rohingya refugee. Photo: By special arrangement

One of them, a father, nearly 60, made a heartbreaking phone call to his adult child, crying, ‘Son, I am being beaten very badly by the police.’

Witnessing the torture inflicted on the arrested Rohingya refugees, some members of the Christian community have begun fleeing to Bangladesh, where they now face the risk of detention by both the government of India and the government of Bangladesh.

On May 8, five members of the Christian community went to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’s office in Vasant Vihar to seek assistance. While detentions and torture have been allegedly occurring on a daily basis without pause, there appears to be no effort to intervene by authorities.

More refugees, who wished to stay anonymous, said they were also facing threats from neighbours and that landlords were evicting them from their homes.

On May 7, the police detained five young male refugees who, to this day, have no information about the whereabouts or the condition of their family members.

Aung Kyaw Moe, the Myanmar government’s deputy human rights minister and the only Rohingya member, said that the rescued refugees had told the defence force members that they had been deported from India by being left in international waters.

“We are coordinating with the local People’s Defence Force to ensure that the 40 Rohingya are safe and provide necessary humanitarian assistance,” he told The Scroll.

The Supreme Court hearing

On May 8, a three-judge Supreme Court bench, led by Justice Surya Kant, heard petitions challenging the Union government’s power to deport Rohingya refugees.

The petitioners, represented by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves and advocate Prashant Bhushan, argued that the individuals – United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)-recognised ‘refugees’ – have constitutional protection against deportation. They cited the principle of non-refoulement, saying they would be tortured and killed if deported to Myanmar, which has already declared them ‘stateless’. They also referred to media reports of deportation, including of women and children, despite holding UNHCR cards.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta noted that India is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and cited the Foreigners Act, giving the government wide powers, especially when national security is involved.

Bhushan highlighted that India is a party to the Genocide Convention, warning that deporting Rohingyas risks enabling genocide. Meanwhile, Gonsalves contended that such deportations violate the refugees’ Article 21 right to life and personal liberty.

The Supreme Court said it would hear the case in detail in July.

Speaking at a press conference, about the Supreme Court’s observations on refugees, advocate Gonsalves said, “India has not signed the UN Refugee Convention, it is true. But the Supreme Court (in the NHRC case) said that it doesn’t matter, Article 21 (of the constitution) covers everyone: citizens, non-citizens – everyone within the territory of the country.”

He said that “sufficient evidence” had been presented to the court and asked why the government had not publicly refuted the claims in court.

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