Court says Foreigners Act does not empower authorities to “pick a person at random, knock at his door and tell him, ‘We suspect you of being a foreigner’, and then rest easy”

Twelve years after he was declared a foreigner by a Foreigner’s Tribunal, the Supreme Court Thursday declared Assam resident Rahim Ali an Indian citizen, and came down heavily on the manner in which citizenship proceedings were first initiated against him 20 years ago.

In observations that could have a bearing on other cases where people have had, or are in the process of having, their citizenship scrutinised in Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals, a Supreme Court Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah questioned the basis on which Rahim Ali’s citizenship had first come into question in 2004.

With Rahim failing to turn up in court, which he attributed to his health, the tribunal passed an ex-parte order declaring that he had illegally migrated to Assam from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971 – the cut-off date for citizenship in Assam. The tribunal held that he “had failed to discharge his burden” under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act and failed to prove that he is not a foreigner.