24 Rohingya refugees, including 7 children arrested in Assam by railway police

Guwahati: Government Railway Police in Assam has arrested 24 Rohingya refugees, including seven children, in the past two days as none of them had valid documents and were carrying fake UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) ID cards.

The Home Ministry of India had told parliament that those entering the country illegally will be considered a "threat to national security".

Junior Home Minister Nityanand Rai said foreign nationals entering India without valid travel documents would be treated as "illegal migrants".

The same applies to those who continued to stay in the country after their documents had expired. Both will be dealt with in line with the existing legal provisions.

In April, the Supreme Court had ruled that illegal immigrants like Rohingya can be immediately deported.

Nine refugees, including three women and a child, were arrested from a railway station in Guwahati on Sunday morning.

Another 15, including three women and six children, were arrested on Friday in Badarpur in Karimganj district as they tried to board the Agartala-Deogarh Express, going from Silchar to Agartala, reported Reuters.

Karimganj shares borders with Bangladesh and Tripura. The group is said to have travelled from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh in search of jobs and were trying to move on to Bangladesh.

The group arrested on Friday was accompanied by an Indian citizen - Aman Ullah of Jammu's Narwal, said a GRP personnel. The GRP is treating the arrest as a case of illegal entry because none of the refugees possessed valid documents.

Indian authorities monitoring the Bangladesh border have arrested several Rohingya over the past months.

Rohingya Muslims are Myanmar's largest minority ethnic group. They fled their nation after what the United Nations calls "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing". There were over 7.3 lakh Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of them are now living in refugee camps in Bangladesh.