ROHINGYAS AND THE (IL)LEGAL QUEST FOR AN INDIAN IDENTITY TEJAL KHANNA * TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction........................................................................................................... 342 The Counterfeit Context of India .......................................................................... 343 Denial of Legal Opportunities to the ‘Illegal’....................................................... 344 Treating Root Causes to Stop the Stateless from Committing Crimes ................. 346 INTRODUCTION The arrests of Rohingyas who have tried to obtain Indian identity documents, like the Aadhaar card, 1 has been on the rise. Across several states of India, and particularly in the city of Hyderabad, Rohingyas have been held by police under allegations that they are in possession of fake Aadhaar cards. 2 Apart from the Aadhaar card, there have also been reported cases of the community acquiring other Indian documents such as the PAN Card, 3 Voter ID card and even the Indian passport. Just last year, in May 2019, Mohammed Faisal, a young Rohingya, was arrested at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport for posing as an Indian national with a fake passport in an attempt to travel to Indonesia. 4 It was later revealed during an investigation that he was able to acquire the Indian passport through his contacts in Hyderabad while his asylum application to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (‘UNHCR’) was still under consideration. Similar cases continue to occur even in times of the COVID-19 public health emergency. For example, in June 2020, in the southern state of Telangana, five Rohingyas, including three women, were arrested for illegal * 1 2 3 4 Tejal Khanna is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Currently, she is also interning with Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, a non-governmental organisation based in New Delhi. Previously, she has also participated in the Statelessness Intensive Course organised by the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne in February 2020. The author is deeply grateful to the peer reviewers who provided extensive and valuable feedback for this commentary. The Aadhaar card provides a proof of identity (but not of citizenship) to an individual, irrespective of age and gender, who is a resident of India. The Aadhaar number is a unique 12-digit random number that is generated after an individual, voluntary, provides their demographic and biometric data. For more on Aadhaar, see ‘Unique Identity Authority of India’, Government of India (Web Page) <https://uidai.gov.in/>. ‘Hyderabad: 3 Rohingya Muslims with Aadhaar, ID Cards Held’, Times of India (online, 5 July 2018) <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/hyderabad-3-rohingyaswith-aadhaar-id-cards-held/articleshow/64870909.cms>. ‘PAN’ in PAN Card refers to Permanent Account Number — a unique alpha-numeric number. Apart from acting as proof of identity, the PAN card is essential for conducting certain financial transactions, such as filing income tax-returns in India. ‘Rohingya Man Arrested at Delhi Airport with Fake Indian Passport’, Hindustan Times (online, 19 May 2019) <https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/rohingya-manarrested-at-delhi-airport-with-fake-indian-passport/storyN7xLRXAJK8ckDcStTz0gYK.html>.