The High Court has directed the state government to file an affidavit by November 26 with details of detention centres in the state.

The Karnataka High Court on Thursday directed the state government to reveal details of the number of detention centres for detaining illegal immigrants. It also directed the state government to spell out the plan to detain immigrants without documents currently in the state.

Justice KN Phaneendra directed the state government to file an affidavit by November 26 with details of detention centres in the state while hearing a bail plea filed by Babul Khan in September 2019 for 14 Bangladeshi immigrants and one Burmese immigrant arrested in August 2018 in the Sarjapur police station limits in Bengaluru. 

"The court has asked for a permanent solution to the detention of foreigners without documents. It is not just about these 15 petitioners but about all foreigners without documents in the state", explains Sirajuddin Ahmed, a lawyer representing one of the petitioners. 

In the absence of a state-run detention centre, the Karnataka government has detained Bangladeshi nationals arrested in 2018 in Parappana Agrahara prison in the city. The counsel representing the state government informed the High Court on Thursday that a temporary detention centre will be arranged in Sarjapur in the city to detain the 15 immigrants.

The state government also informed the High Court that it had identified 35 spaces to temporarily detain foreigners without documents in the state. These spaces will be used to detain illegal immigrants including immigrants after they are either released on bail or after they have completed their prison term in criminal cases.

In addition, the state government has repurposed a hostel built for SC/ST students in Nelamangala, around 40 km outside Bengaluru, into a detention centre for illegal immigrants. While the construction of the building is completed, it is only expected to be opened for use in January 2020. 

The Foreigner Regional Registration Offices (FRRO) under the Bureau of Immigration in Bengaluru has compiled a list of 866 foreigners without documents in the state. 

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The affidavit to be submitted in the High Court next week will be prepared by the Principal Secretary of the Home Department and will include details of the plans laid out by the state government to detain illegal immigrants. This also includes foreigners convicted in criminal cases and have either been released on bail or have completed their punishment term. Those illegal immigrants convicted in criminal cases will not be held in detention centres but instead will be held in prisons. 

The counsel representing the Ministry of Home Affairs told the High Court that if the detained foreign nationals are not accepted by the home country, the state will have to take care of them at the expense of tax payers' money. 

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The respondents in the case are the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bengaluru Police Commissioner, Director General and Inspector General of Police (DG/IGP), and the Karnataka Chief Secretary.

The developments in the case also come at a time Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared that the National Register of Citizens (NRC), first implemented in Assam, will be carried out across the country. The NRC asks residents to prove their citizenship, the citizenship of their ancestors and their relationship to their ancestors. In Assam, residents were asked to produce documents proving that they or their families lived in India before March 24, 1971, and in the final list published, more than 19 lakh residents were excluded.

Last month, Bengaluru police detained 60 suspected illegal immigrants from Bangladesh residing in Ramamurthynagar, Bellandur and Marathahalli police station limits in the city. They were housed in government homes for men, women and children and will be deported to their home country on Friday.

Read: The harassment of Bengaluru's Bengali-speaking workers in the name of 'security'