KOLKATA: Neither one’s voter card nor Aadhaar nor bank account is conclusive proof of Indian citizenship, the Calcutta High Court has said, refusing to interfere in the state’s proceedings regarding a “Murshidabad man” held in a detention centre for being a “Bangladeshi” because of obvious discrepancies.Nasir and his cousin, Suman Molla, were given repeated chances to prove that the former was an Indian citizen by descent, the court said.Suman claimed that Nasir’s father died in 1980 and he brought up Nasir, but the court noted that it was inclined to “disbelieve” the contention as Nasir (46 years old, according to records) was older than Suman (38 years old).The division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi also said Nasir and Suman did not come with “clean hands”; Suman claimed to be Nasir’s cousin while being questioned by cops but, in court, said he was Nasir’s uncle.Suman’s lawyer was also allowed to call Nasir, held at the Lalgola detention centre, to know the whereabouts of the latter’s mother.Nasir responded that both his parents were dead and buried but could not specify the location.A DNA test could have been done to ascertain matters if Nasir could specify the burial spot, the court noted.The state’s counsel, on the first day of the hearing, told the division bench that Nasir had admitted in custody that he was a Bangladeshi national who had illegally entered India years back.The court opted not to enter into the debate on whether the admission made while in detention could have the same consequences for the case as an admission made to cops while in their custody.“Even if we are to apply the principle that an admission made in the custody of the police should be discarded, nonetheless, the onus of establishing citizenship remains with the detainee,” the bench held.Nasir could not produce a birth certificate either, though Suman — on Nasir’s behalf — produced a voter card, an Aadhaar card, a PAN card and a United Bank of India passbook.“A voter identity card is not conclusive proof of Indian citizenship. It is evidence of the detainee’s enrolment on electoral rolls,” the court said, noting that Nasir’s name was deleted from the electoral roll in the SIR process. “Aadhaar, too, cannot by itself be conclusive proof of Indian citizenship,” the court said, making the same observation about PAN and the bank account.
