The Railway Protection Force on Sunday detained seven Rohingya children at a railway station in Tripura along the border with Assam, Northeast Now reported.

An unidentified Railway Protection Force official of the Northeast Frontier Railway zone said a boy and six girls were detained at the Dharmanagar Railway Station in northern Tripura, around 190 km from state capital Agartala.

“The children, all under 18, would be handed over to Tripura Police today for further legal formalities,” added the official. A total of 68 Rohingya Muslims, mostly children, have been apprehended in Tripura and along the Assam-Tripura border in two weeks.

Advertisement

The official said the children had reached Dharmanagar from Agartala by bus and were accompanied by touts. They wanted to take a train ahead to Badarpur in southern Assam.

“Sensing the presence of RPF troopers, the touts, who were accompanying the children, escaped from the spot,” said the official, adding that authorities were unable to understand the language spoken by the children. “Railway tickets up to Badarpur railway station were found on them. They might have been trafficked by middlemen.”

An unidentified police official said the children will be lodged in a juvenile home run by the Tripura government.

Advertisement

North Tripura Superintendent of Police Bhanupada Chakraborty said they will investigate the matter to find out how the children came to Tripura.

On January 21, the Assam Police had apprehended 30 Rohingya along the border with Assam. They are now in judicial custody in southern Assam.

A day later, a group of 31 Rohingya Muslims stranded near Tripura’s border with Bangladesh for four days were handed over to the Tripura police by the Border Security Force. The refugees, including nine women and 16 children, were sent to judicial custody for 14 days.

Five Rohingyas, who were arrested for illegally entering India and lodged in a prison in Assam, were deported to Myanmar on January 3.