Verification drive in city
SHILLONG: The High Court of Meghalaya has directed the city police to ensure that no genuine citizen or innocent person is harassed during the verification campaign carried out by Police to ensure that “illegal foreign nationals” do not settle in “unregulated parts” of the state capital.
The High Court issued this directive on November 17 after hearing a petition filed by three citizens from Shillong opposing the verification drive conducted by police in different parts of the city.
One of the petitioners Vijay Raj said that recently police raided various parts of Shillong City in the name of verification and detection of illegal immigrants and in the process several thousand citizens were taken to various police stations in the wee hours of morning and were allowed to go only in the evening after verifying their documents.
“However, not a single illegal immigrant was detected but the genuine citizens were harassed by this process,” he said.
Earlier, BJP had criticized the police for harassing people in the name of verification.
During the operation, which commenced in the wee hours in the presence of several police personnel and magistrates of East Khasi Hills district, 684 men were picked up from areas like Fourth Furlong and Pynthorbah, located near the Polo ground.
The verification drive also came at a time when the National Investigating Agency (NIA), which is probing the Burdwan blast case, had signalled that it would also focus on the role of some elements in Assam and Meghalaya as well.
Meghalaya, being a frontier state, is strategically significant from the internal security point of view. The inter-state boundary between Meghalaya and Assam is more than 600km, while Meghalaya shares a 443km border with Bangladesh.