Guwahati: A 50-year-old man lodged in a detention centre in Assam’s Goalpara died while undergoing treatment at a hospital on Friday.
With this death, according to the Foreigners Tribunals report, the foreigners death in Assam’s detention centres have reached 29 in the last three years, HT reports.
Sushanta Biswa Sarma, superintendent of Police, Goalpara said, ‘Naresh Koch who was about 50-year-old and a declared foreigner from Goalpara died on Friday at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. He was admitted there after suffering a stroke ten days back. The dead body has been cremated.’
GHMC Spokesperson Ramen Talukdar said the 50-year-old died while e was undergoing treatment.
Naresh Koch(50) was declared a foreigner in June 2017 in an exparte order issued by Foreigners tribunal.
A daily wage earner from Tinkonia Para village, belonging to the Koch community, Koch was arrested and sent to Goalpara detention centre in March 2018.
While the authorities have declared Koch as ‘foreigner’, his family claims that his grandfather Harilal Koch had his name in the 1971 electoral rolls.
According to recently submitted reports, 28 detainees from the year 2016 to October 30, 2019 have died in the detention centre or while undergoing treatment said the Nityanand Rai, minister of state in the ministry of home affairs told Parliament in November 2019.
In the month of October, 65-year-old detainee Dulal Paul died on 13 of the same month after spending two years in a detention centre.
Dulal’s family refused to accept his body until he was declared an Indian citizen.
This created much controversy over his death for which the Assam government was forced to appoint a committee headed by a deputy inspector general of police to review the conditions in the detention centres.
Despite two months since Dulal’s death, the committee is not yet submitted the report.
A second official of the Assam Police said as many as 175 declared foreigners have so far been released on bail after the May 2019 Supreme Court order that said those who have spent three years or more in detention should be conditionally released.
According to reports, as many as 900 individuals are presently confined in six detention centres across the state — at Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Tezpur and Silchar.
Meanwhile the government is constructing another detention centre at the Matia in Goalpara which has the capacity to hold 3,000 persons.