Assam Moves First Batch of Declared Foreigners to Matia Transit Camp

Guwahati: Assam’s first detention centre, officially labelled as Transit Camp at Matia in Goalpara district, received the first batch of 68 people on Friday who were “declared foreigners” by the Foreigners’ Tribunal, authorities said. 

Until the construction of Matia transit camp with a capacity of 3,000 detenus, the ‘illegal foreigners’ were lodged in six ‘detention centres’ across the state’s jails. The authorities said remaining ‘illegal foreigners’ would be moved to the transit camp gradually. 

The shifting of ‘illegal foreigners’ has been carried out following an order of the Gauhati High Court in August and November last year, they said. The 68 ‘declared foreigners’ include 45 men and 21 women and two children. 

In the absence of a transit camp, the government had built ‘detention camps’ to house over 1,000 ‘declared foreigners’ inside six jails in Kokrajhar, Goalpara, Tezpur, Jorhat, Dibrugarh and Silchar districts.

Later, the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court released most of them on ‘conditional bail’, however, 177 stayed put as they failed to produce necessary documents to process their bail applications. 

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