Mizoram court sends eight Rohingya girls, rescued by police, to protection home in Aizawl

Aizawl: A local court on Friday ordered that eight Rohingya girls, who were rescued by the Mizoram Police from Dungtlang village in Champhai district, should be sent to a protection home in Aizawl, police said. Champai district is located near the Mizoram-Myanmar border.

The court instructed the police and the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in the district to choose a women protection home, which would be able to accommodate the Rohingya girls, reported to be victims of human trafficking.“The girls were allegedly abducted from a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh and brought to Mizoram to be sent to Myanmar,” police said.

These Rohingya girls were rescued from Dungtkang village in Mizoram on Monday. According to police, the girls were being taken to Myanmar from Bangladesh via India. In April, eight Rohingya women, who were trying to enter Mizoram without any travel documents, were detained by the state police at the Mizoram-Assam border.

They had claimed that they were from the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Sabulara. The women also told police that some people abducted them from a market in Bangladesh on 19 April and brought them to Silchar in Assam.

They have been kept in a Social Welfare Department-run protection home for women. “We have no choice but to keep them in protection homes as they (Rohingya women) were victims, not criminals,” the Deputy Inspector General of Police of Northern Range, Lalbiakthanga Khiangte, said.

Khiangte added that decision would be made in consultation with the state government and the Ministry of Home Affairs