Pursuant to this, the court directed that the authority concerned be requested to furnish the necessary details, latest by the morning of July 20.
The Gujarat High Court on Friday directed the Special Operations Group (SOG) officials in Ahmedabad to expedite the verification of the Aadhaar card of an Ahmedabad resident who was detained in June on suspicion of being a citizen of Bangladesh.
The court’s direction came after the detainee’s mother filed a habeas corpus petition earlier this month. According to the petitioner-mother, her son Aamirbhai Shaikh was “allegedly and illegally detained” by the Ahmedabad SOG from his work place on the suspicion that Shaikh was a citizen of Bangladesh and not of India.
Harshad Patel, DCP of Ahmedabad SOG, told this paper, “He, along with four others, was detained on June 30 as part of our routine raids and based on our intel that they are Bangladeshis. They were detained near Chandola Lake, and Shaikh has been kept at the SOG detention centre in Ahmedabad.” According to Patel the detainee is anywhere between 32 and 38 years of age.
While presenting Shaikh before the court via video conference, Patel on Thursday submitted that at the time of detention, Shaikh had failed to produce any documents ascertaining his citizenship and that it was on July 8 that his mother furnished documents, including his Aadhaar Card and other documents, which has now been sent to the authority concerned for verification. With no criminal antecedent, as confirmed by Patel, before the court, it also emerged that the man “possibly travelled to this country from Bangladesh as a child aged 3 to 4 years.”
A division bench of Justices Sonia Gokani and N V Anjaria on Thursday directed that the details pertaining to disputed citizenship be presented before the court on Friday. However, on Friday, public prosecutor Mitesh Amin requested for more time to get the details from the Mumbai office of UIDAI and ensured that “he shall personally look into the matter, after taking necessary instructions from all the officers concerned.”
Pursuant to this, the court directed that the authority concerned be requested to furnish the necessary details, latest by the morning of July 20.
Advocate Chintan Acharya, representing the petitioner, also submitted that the detainee’s parents are PAN card holders and that the Ahmedabad Collector had already examined all necessary documents at the time of allotment of a residential plot to the family in the post-Godhra incident period, thus requiring no further scrutiny.
Acharya informed the court that he shall be filing a rejoinder-affidavit before the court to submit the same.