Have somehow kept the kitchen fires burning: Wife of Assam man declared foreigner Mojibor Sheikh’s family struggle financially as they await his return from detention centre
11, Nov 2021 | CJP Team
In our bid to help our fellow Indian citizens in Assam, CJP is now working towards securing conditional bail for Mojibor Sheikh of Shaljhora village that falls under the jurisdiction of Dhaligaon police station in the Chirang district of Assam.
Sheikh was declared foreigner by the Kajalgaon-Chirang on Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT Case No. 335/2010MKCR/ID and IM(D)T Case No. 5949/D/1998) on November 15, 2019 and sent to the Goalpara Detention Camp.
Every day of each week, a formidable team of community volunteers, district volunteer motivators and lawyers—CJP’s Team Assam – is providing ready at hand paralegal guidance, counselling and actual legal aid to hundreds of individuals and families paralysed by the citizenship-driven humanitarian crisis in the state. Our boots on the ground approach has ensured that 12,00,000 persons filled their forms to enlist in the NRC (2017-2019) and over the past one year alone we have helped release 41 persons from Assam’s dreaded detention camps. Our intrepid team provides paralegal assistance to, on an average of 72-96 families each month. Our district-level, legal team works on 25 Foreigner Tribunal cases month on month. This ground level data ensures informed interventions by CJP in our Constitutional Courts, the Guwahati High Court and the Supreme Court. Such work is possible because of you, individuals all over India, who believe in this work. Our maxim, Equal Rights for All. #HelpCJPHelpAssam. Donate NOW!
The CJP team had been looking for his home since the first week of September. We finally found where his family lived in the third week of September and visited the family. “I went there with our District Volunteer Motivator Abul Kalam Azad and community volunteer Pijush Chakraborty and met the family,” says Nanda Ghosh, CJP Assam state team in-charge.
Ever since Mojibor Sheikh was declared a foreigner and sent to a detention camp, his wife Rejiya Khatun has been working in other people’s homes as a domestic help, just so that she can provide for her family in the absence of her husband who was the family’s breadwinner. “We took a loan worth Rs 32,000 to fight his case and now I work in homes of other people to pay off our debts, interest upon which are mounting everyday,” she told the CJP team.
What’s worse, is that his son who was studying in class seven at the time of his father’s incarceration, was forced to drop out of school and take up daily wage work to supplement the family’s income. Meanwhile, Sheikh’s elderly mother Masiran Bewa was beside herself with grief at the thought of her son suffering behind bars. “I miss a lot my son! I am sick and financially incapacitated so I haven’t seen the face of my son even once in the last two years,” she lamented.
Rejiya Khatun appealed, “We are very poor and helpless people, please help us to release him.”
The CJP team examined all documents and started the process of looking for a bailor. “We have already found a bailor,” says Ghosh sharing updates on developments in the case adding, “We have started the process of verifying their documents. We are working to secure his release before the end of the month.” Watch this space.
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