MUMBAI: Five years after a 30-year-old man from Mazgaon was arrested on charges of being an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh, a magistrate’s court this week acquitted him after it found his birth certificate showed he was an Indian citizen.
The police had raided a shop in Dongri and booked the man in 2016 after receiving “secret information” that Bangladeshi nationals were residing there illegally. “I have arrived at the conclusion that prosecution utterly failed to prove that accused being Bangladeshi infiltrator had entered into India without having valid document of travel through unauthorised route and stayed here,” the court said.
The accused, Ramjan Shaikh, had been slapped with a case under the Passport (Entry into India) Rules and the Foreigners Act.
The court held that while Aadhaar, ration and PAN cards and driving licence cannot be cited to prove citizenship of the country, birth, bona fide and domicile certificates and passport can be relied upon to establish the origin of any person. “Even the election card can be said to be sufficient proof of citizenship as while applying for the election card or voting card, a person has to file declaration with the authority in view of form 6 of ‘Peoples Representation Act’ to the authority that he is citizen of India and if the declaration is found false, he is liable for punishment,” the court said.
The court relied on the original documents that were submitted by the accused man to establish his nationality as Indian.