Bangla infiltrator who contested Assam elections arrested

“Md Kamaruddin alias Md Kamaluddin was tracked down at village Kapahbari under Morajhar police station and arrested. He has been already dispatched to Karimganj district on the Indo-Bangladesh border for deportation tomorrow if not today,” Nitul Gogoi, SP of Nagaon district in central Assam said over the telephone on Sunday.

The Bangladeshi citizen had not only entered India illegally but had also procured various documents to prove his Indian citizenship and managed to acquire land and property in Kapahbari village. His biggest act of daring though was when he tried his luck in an Assembly election. “He did file his nomination for the No 90 Jamunamukh Assembly constituency in 1996, but later withdrew for unknown reasons,” Gogoi told The Indian Express.

A native of Bangladesh’s Maulabibazar district, Md Kamaruddin is believed to have infiltrated into Assam in the late 1980s. “He must have come in the last 1980s, because he got married to a woman from Lanka in Nagaon district in 1990,” the SP said. The father of three sons and three daughters, his eldest daughter is married to a gaon-burrah (village headman) in a nearby village.

More interesting is that even as a resident of Kapahbari in Assam, he “procured a Pakistani passport in 1994” and is said to have even made a trip to Karachi. Recalling an earlier judgment of the same court, Justice BK Sharma of the Gauhati High Court, in his judgment of July 25 had said: “In that case, the petitioner (Md Kamaruddin), after successfully entering Assam ... not only roamed around Indian soil, but also contested the 1996 election from No 90 Jamunamukh Legislative Assembly Constituency. The petitioner was in possession of a passport issued by the Pakistan Government.... This can happen only in Assam.”