1. Framing the Intervention 14 Introduction In early 2022, Rahim Ali—a 58-year-old, poor agricultural labourer from Kashimpur village in Assam’s Nalbari district—died destitute and legally erased. He had spent the last 18 years of his life struggling to defend his status as an Indian citizen, and the last ten years as a man stripped of legal identity—declared a “foreigner” by a Foreigners Tribunal (FT) on the ground that he had unlawfully entered India from Bangladesh. Rahim Ali had submitted school records, electoral rolls, and community testimonies to establish his Indian citizenship—but to no avail. He challenged the FT’s decision before the Gauhati High Court, which upheld the tribunal’s findings, maintaining his precarious legal status as a person the State had deemed foreign. As he sought further legal redress, his case languished. Denied ration cards, medical care, and other entitlements tied to citizenship, Rahim Ali fell into deeper poverty. He died awaiting justice.1 Two years later, the Indian Supreme Court overturned the FT’s decision—tragically, posthumously.2 Describing the FT’s findings as “wholly unsustainable”,3 the Court found that the State had proceeded against Rahim Ali without any material basis, and that the evidence he submitted was rejected without adequate reason or attention to basic principles of fairness. The Court observed that his family had long resided in Assam, the FT had already declared his sibling an Indian citizen, and discrepancies in his documents were minor and did not diminish their authenticity. On the contrary, the Court found that such imperfections actually strengthened the credibility of his claim. In the Court’s “considered opinion”, minor inconsistencies “would further buttress the appellant’s claim… that not being in the wrong, and being an ignorant person, he truthfully and faithfully produced the official records as they were in his possession… The conduct of an illegal migrant would not be so casual.”4 Although the Supreme Court ordered the matter to be reconsidered by the FT, this decision arrived far too late. Rahim Ali’s fate had already been sealed—not by due process, but by a system that denied him timely justice. “What is the point now?” his family asked. “The fear he lived under, of being taken away, died with him. If they still wanted to call him a foreigner, what would they do—pick him up from his grave?”5