"I am the original refugee from Burma and had migrated from British Burma to British India,” said senior advocate Fali Nariman in his opening remarks before the Supreme Court while appearing on behalf of two Rohingya immigrants Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir. The duo has challenged "any move to deport illegal refugees to Burma,” reported The Economic Times (ET) of October 3, 2017. India is reported to be home to at least 40,000 Rohingyas who have fled from Rakhine State in the south-east Asian country. These Indo-Aryans have been described by the United Nations in 2013 as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
Fali Nariman (left): arguing for the rights of the Burmese Rohingyas (Photo: Wikipedia)
Nariman "assailed the Centre’s stand that illegal refugees cannot claim protection of their fundamental rights under the Constitution as it would adversely affect the rights of Indian citizens and that the issue was ‘not justiciable,’” reported ET. Stating that the Indian constitution protects the rights of non-citizens as well, Nariman told the three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra that "humanitarian concern for children, women and the sick outweigh justiciability.” Nariman acknowledged that "terrorists from any group should be dealt with as per the law but simultaneously, innocent refugees including women and children need protection.”
The Live Law News Network reported, also on October 3, that Nariman termed the government’s position that "Article 32 rights (under the Indian constitution) to file a writ petition in the Supreme Court is not available to non-citizens” is absurd. He pointed out that Articles 14 and 21 provides such rights to all "persons.”
Summing up the arguments advanced by Nariman, the bench said the government cannot "simply paint” everybody as a terrorist. The Centre in an affidavit had termed Rohingya refugees as illegal immigrants and said some of them were part of a sinister design of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and terror groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), whose presence in the country will pose a "serious national security threat.”