By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court to restrain the government from deporting seven Rohingya Muslims to Myanmar.
The Rohingyas have been lodged at the Silchar central prison in Cachar district of Assam since 2012 on charges of irregular entry.
A Bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi will hear the case on Thursday. The Bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph, rejected advocate Prashant Bhushan’s plea for urgent hearing. Bhushan said that some Rohingya refugees were on the verge of being deported and the matter required urgent hearing.
Earlier this week, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said that states had been asked to identify Rohingya refugees and collect their biometric data, the report of which would be sent to Myanmar.
The development came after the Railway Protection Force alerted the Kerala authorities to watch out for the movement of Rohingya refugees in groups to Kerala and hand them over to police if they were found travelling on trains.
More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Rakhine in August 2017 after Myanmar’s army launched a massive crackdown in its northern state.
