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Witnesses said that when 40-year-old Muhammad Saleem and his wife Nomina were taken to the cemetery in Jammu’s Narawal district for the burial of their five-month-old daughter Omar Habiba, their hands were tied.
Saleem and Nomina, two Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, are prisoners at the Hiranagar Holding Center in Kathua District, Jammu and Kashmir. Two of their children, one-year-old Omar Habiba and Omar Salina, were born in the detention centre. They also have a 17-year-old son, Riyad El-Din. The children live with their parents in the detention centre.
Close family relatives alleged that Habiba’s death on Wednesday was caused by smoke inhalation from tear gas shells fired by police as they moved against Rohingya protesters at the center on Tuesday, but police and detention center officials denied the allegations.
According to Kathua SSP Shiv Deep Singh, the death of the child had nothing to do with Tuesday’s incident. The SSP said Habiba had been unwell since birth.
Kushal Kumar, the director of Katwa District Jail who is in charge of the detention centre, said the child was under treatment.
On Tuesday evening, as her condition deteriorated, she was taken to the hospital, where she died the next day.
According to the officials, the parents wanted to bury the body in Narwhal where their relatives lived, and the Katwa District Magistrate authorized their transfer there.
They were brought to the Rohingya settlement in Narowal on Wednesday night, but when they got out of the car, eyewitnesses including family relatives said they were shocked to see their parents, Saleem and Nomina, as well as their teenage son, Riazuddin, handcuffed.
They were allegedly kept handcuffed for more than an hour as they mourned their relatives and then buried the body. After that, they were taken back to Hiranagar Detention Centre.
However, senior police and prison officials said they had no information about the use of handcuffs in the incident, and that their staff were not involved.
Saleem came to Jammu in 2012 with Nomina and their son Riazuddin, who was five years old at the time. However, in the same year, Slim was arrested by the police during a routine UNHCR card check, and committed to the district jail in Ambala.
In 2021, he was transferred to a detention center in Hiranagar. Nomina was also sent to a detention center the same year when she was taken from a medical camp where she had gone for a medical examination. Their son, age 15, was also sent to the same facility. The couple then went on to have two more children in the detention centre.
The atmosphere in the detention center has been tense since May, with detainees holding protests and hunger strikes at frequent intervals. On Tuesday, the protests led to clashes, and police reinforcements and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were brought in to bring the situation under control. Latex and tear gas shells were also used.
Officials said about six police personnel and more than 10 Rohingya were injured.
The center currently houses a total of 271 Rohingya, including 74 women and 70 children – many of whom were born there.
The center was a sub-jail before being notified as a detention center by the J&K administration on 5 March 2021, to house “illegal” immigrants as defined in Section 2(b) of the Citizenship Act 1955. There have been a number of detainees held there since 6 March 2021, when both the center and the J&K administration began transferring Rohingya, who were an “illegal” center for their deportation in Jammu.
But an April 2021 Supreme Court order said those detained in Jammu should not be deported without due process.
The detainees are calling for their immediate release so that they can join their family members who are staying in the Rohingya settlements outside the centre.
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