On the evening of May 8, a young Rohingya refugee in Delhi got a phone call from Myanmar – the country from which his family had fled to escape what is widely acknowledged as a genocide against their community.
It was his parents on the phone line. “My parents told me that they had been dropped in the middle of the sea,” he said.
Just two days before, he had seen them disappear from their home in Delhi when the police detained them along with 41 others. They now recounted to him the ordeal they had been through, which had culminated in Indian authorities forcing them off a navy vessel in the Andaman Sea and making them swim into Myanmarese territory with nothing but life jackets.
After they made landfall, they managed to borrow a phone from a local fisherman to call him. “They were afraid that the Myanmar army might arrest them and take them away at any moment,” the young man recalled.
But they were lucky – they had swum ashore on a stretch of land controlled not by the Myanmar army, which is hostile to Rohingyas, but by the National Unity Government of Myanmar, the country’s civilian government that has been operating in exile since the 2021 military coup.
Officials of the National Unity Government of Myanmar confirmed to Scroll that 40 Rohingya refugees are in the custody of its armed wing, the People’s Defence Force.
Aung Kyaw Moe, the government’s Deputy Human Rights Minister and its only Rohingya member, said the rescued refugees had told the defence force members that they had been deported from India by being forced into the sea.
“We are coordinating with the local People’s Defence Force to ensure that the 40 Rohingya are safe and provide necessary humanitarian assistance,” he told Scroll. “We will do our best to ensure they are able to contact their families.”
Scroll reviewed recordings of two of the phone calls made by the refugees to their families in Delhi, detailing their forced displacement at sea and arrival in Myanmar.
In one of the phone recordings, a refugee alleges he and others were beaten by officials who made unfounded accusations linking them to the Pahalgam terrorist attack and claiming they had killed Hindus. There is no public evidence supporting any such connection between the Rohingya community and the attack in Kashmir.
To verify the identity of the refugees in custody in Myanmar, Scroll also compared a list of names and ages of the 40 refugees provided by the National Unity Government with the list of the 43 refugees picked up in Delhi. Thirty-six were found to be the same or substantially similar.
Further confirmation came when Scroll showed photos of the refugees in custody in Myanmar – also shared by the National Unity Government – to a Rohingya refugee in Delhi whose family members were among those detained on May 6. He recognised five, expressing relief that they were safe.
This method of deportation, as first reported by Maktoob Media on Monday, is a departure from established procedure and appears to be in violation of both Indian legal norms for deportations and fundamental principles of international refugee law, experts said.
The refugees were registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and possessed identity cards which sets them legally apart from undocumented migrants.
These deportations are a “blatant breach of India’s obligations under international law and also violates India’s own domestic law and policy”, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties said in a statement on Thursday.
Expressing concern over the deportations, Moe, the minister in Myanmar’s civilian government-in-exile, said the Rohingya are “a persecuted minority that fled genocide committed by the Myanmar military and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar”.
“Deporting them while they were attempting refuge is sending them back to the hell they escaped from and survived,” he told Scroll.
Thomas Andrews, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, in a statement said that “the idea that Rohingya refugees have been cast into the sea from naval vessels is nothing short of outrageous”. He described these as “unconscionable, unacceptable acts”.
On Thursday, the United Nations expert announced an inquiry into these allegations.
Two Rohingya refugees in Delhi, whose family members were among the deported group, have filed a petition in the Supreme Court detailing the manner in which the deportations were conducted. They have urged that the deported refugees be brought back to Delhi and that no more Rohingya refugees be deported without due process.
The government of India has not officially confirmed the deportations or commented on the method used. Scroll has sought a comment from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, responsible for these matters. This story will be updated if a response is received.
Detention in Delhi
The events leading to the deportation began on the evening of Monday, May 6. The Delhi Police allegedly conducted raids on the homes of Muslim and Christian Rohingya refugees in five locations across Delhi: Hastasal, Uttam Nagar, Madanpur Khadar, Vikaspuri, and Shaheen Bagh.
According to accounts from the Rohingya community and the petition filed in the Supreme Court, 43 refugees were allegedly detained.
The young refugee quoted above was with his wife at a government hospital at the time the raids were conducted. “The police stormed into the hospital and forced the doctor to discharge my wife, saying that we are ghuspaithhiyas [intruders],” he recalled. “The police took us to our home – my parents were there with my three infant children. They then took away my parents in front of their grandchildren, without informing us why.”
Another refugee alleged that male police officers raided his home and picked up two of his female family members. “Shouldn’t there have been female officers to handle women?” he asked.
The refugees were held for over 24 hours at various police stations. The group allegedly included 13 women, four senior citizens, an alleged cancer patient and nine teenagers – including at least one minor.
As a result of the detentions, families were separated. One petitioner in the Supreme Court said that his parents, two siblings and another family member were picked up, leaving him, his wife and infant children behind. The second petitioner’s sister and niece were the only family members taken.
On May 7, the day after they had been picked up, the detainees were allegedly transferred from police stations to the Inderlok detention centre in Delhi. “They were told that they were being moved there to collect their biometrics,” said a refugee whose brother was in the detained group. His brother had managed to call him through a cell phone on his way to Inderlok.
Conditions were reportedly poor: the Supreme Court petition alleges they lacked adequate food, water and medical access despite some of the refugees said to be suffering from Hepatitis B, tuberculosis and diabetes.
From Delhi to Port Blair
From the Inderlok detention centre, most of the refugees were transferred to an airport in or around Delhi, one of the detained refugees told his brother over the phone. They were then flown approximately 1,300 kilometres to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, bringing them significantly closer to Myanmar. The exact details of this transfer and flight remain unclear.
Upon arrival in Port Blair, the refugees allegedly had their United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-registered identity cards, money and other possessions taken away. They were allegedly put on a ship by Indian officials. On board the vessel, they were allegedly blindfolded and their hands tied.
On the ship, the men were allegedly beaten by officials who linked them to the Pahalgam terrorist attack. Later, the officials reportedly offered the refugees a choice between being deported to Myanmar or to Indonesia. Desperate to avoid returning to the country where they faced genocide, they chose Indonesia.
After three or four hours, their restraints and blindfolds were removed. They were then allegedly forced off the ship and into the sea, each given a life jacket.
The refugees swam towards the nearest shore. Speaking to locals, they realised that they had been returned to Myanmar. This was the country they had fled to escape decades of discrimination and brutal military crackdowns – widely characterised as ethnic cleansing and genocide. This has forced lakhs of Rohingya to flee to neighbouring countries.
On the evening of May 8, they managed to borrow a phone from a local fisherman. They used this to call their family members in Delhi, informing them about their location and the circumstances of their deportation.
A Rohingya refugee in Delhi said that his deported family members told him over their brief phone call to go to Bangladesh. “They told me that they don’t want me to get the same torture they got.”
The deported family members also advised him to change his phone number. “They said that the Indian officials took away all their documents, including the piece of paper on which they had written down my number,” he said. “They were afraid that the police would track me through the number.”
The refugee managed to record this phone conversation which he shared with Scroll.
In custody of Myanmar’s government-in-exile
In Myanmar, the refugees initially “got into the hands of a local defence force” that is not under the chain of command of Myanmar’s National Unity Government, said Toe Kyaw Hlaing, a representative of the Joint Coordination Committee for Foreign Affairs of the National Unity Consultative Council.
The council is an advisory body to the civilian National Unity Government that has been operating in exile since the military junta seized power in 2021.
However, said Hlaing, “a Member of Parliament got connected with them and asked the local [People’s Defence Force, the civilian government’s armed wing] to take good care of the refugees”.
The specific location where the refugees landed and their current whereabouts in Myanmar are being withheld for the safety of the refugees and the People’s Defence Force personnel. Myanmar has been embroiled in a civil war since 2021 between its ruling military junta government and the National Unity Government.
Unlawful deportation
Throwing foreign nationals into the sea violated the legal procedure for deportations, experts said.
India lacks a specific domestic law for refugees but follows a Standard Operating Procedure for foreign nationals claiming refugee status, issued by the Union Home Ministry in 2011. This procedure suggests considering long-term visas for those fleeing persecution. Only those deemed unfit for a long-term visa may be detained and deported.
According to Rohingya refugees, the government of India has stopped issuing long-term visas to Rohingya refugees, with few exceptions, since 2017.
Crucially, the procedure mandates initiating deportation steps through diplomatic channels. If diplomatic efforts fail within six months, the foreigner is to be released from detention under specified conditions – collecting their biometric details, having a local surety, monthly police reporting – until formal deportation can occur.
This procedure was clearly ignored last week, according to the Rohingya refugees in Delhi that Scroll spoke with. According to them, their family members and other Rohingya refugees were summarily detained, transported and thrown into the sea. In the case of the Rohingya, diplomatic deportation is practically impossible because Myanmar denies the community citizenship, rendering them stateless.
The manner of deportation also contradicts previous statements by the Indian government. In 2017, after announcing the intention to deport all Rohingya, Kiren Rijiju, who was then state minister in the home affairs ministry, had said, “There’s a procedure, there is a rule of law. We can’t throw them out just like that. We can’t dump them in the Bay of Bengal.”
The deportations occurred on the same day the Supreme Court heard a petition filed by two Rohingya refugees in 2017 seeking protection against deportation to Myanmar. At that May 8 hearing, the Solicitor General assured the court that deportations would follow procedure established by law, echoing a 2021 interim order. The government’s actions violated this assurance to the highest court, a lawyer who filed the recent petition on behalf of the Rohingya refugees whose family members were thrown into the sea, told Scroll.
Violation of international law
The deportation appears to violate fundamental international law principles, particularly non-refoulement, the People’s Union of Civil Liberties said. This principle prohibits returning refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they face a well-founded fear of persecution or threats to life and freedom.
While India is not party to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention, non-refoulement is widely considered customary international law, binding on all states. Given the documented genocide and conflict targeting Rohingya in Myanmar, their forced return constitutes a clear breach, the PUCL said.
India is also a signatory to the Convention against Torture that prohibits expelling, returning or extraditing a person to a state where there are substantial grounds to believe they face torture. The conditions faced by Rohingya in Myanmar raise significant concerns about the risk of torture or ill-treatment upon return, potentially in violation of India’s obligations.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ global spokesperson, Babar Baloch, told Scroll that the organisation has sought information from Indian authorities and assurances that refugees will not be returned to situations risking their life or freedom.
On Thursday, Scroll reported on another case of 78 individuals – ostensibly undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants – being forced into the water and “pushed” into Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi Police claimed that there were three Indians among this group.
