Trespasser in one's own country

It was like any other mundane day for Aziza Rahman, the sixty-year-old man - except that he landed in jail.

Life in the enclaves has little variations. You get up in the morning, if you have land to cultivate, then you go there and do the job.

Or you venture out to Bangladeshi territory, hang around the market place and look for a job. And jobs are hard to come by in this remote place of Dashiarchhara in Kurigram.

For Aziza it was time to find a job, because rice was running low at home for his family of five.

As he was sitting in a tea stall in the market on Bangladeshi territory, there was a commotion. Somebody pointed at him and said, “He is a Chhit people (somebody living in enclaves).”

He was alarmed. As a dweller of an Indian enclave, he was an Indian citizen and should not have crossed into Bangladesh. But all that is on papers. When you are stuck nowhere in a small village surrounded by another country, you have to cross the boundary every day. That they do, because on the enclave you have nothing – no schools, no health care, no nothing, nada.

But if someone wants to get you into trouble for trespassing, they can.

So Aziza was alarmed as he saw a policeman approaching.

“Are you from the Chhit?” the cop asked.

“Yes.”Aziza mumbled.

“You are trespassing. I put you under arrest.”

“But everybody in the enclave trespasses. We won't survive if we do not come to Bangladesh.”

“That's bad. Too bad. You all will be arrested if you are found out. Today we got you.”

Aziza was put on a van and taken to the police station. The next day he was sent to Kurigram jail.

Sixteen days later he came out on bail. The case still lingers.

Yesterday was his hearing.

“I have to appear in court at least once a month. I may wish to skip it. Then I have to send money to the lawyer who gets a new date.”

And every hearing costs him money. Seven hundred takas.

“I have so far spent 52,000 takas because I am a trespasser into Bangladesh. But two days from today our enclave will be Bangladesh. I will be a citizen of Bangladesh. What will happen to my case then? Shall I still be tried for trespass? Shall I still have to pay money for my case?” Aziza asks.

There were other villagers around. They were muttering their own interpretations of the law. Many of them have been booked for trespass.

And it sounds surrealistic, unreal, sitting in this Indian enclave that is set to become Bangladesh in a few hours that these people are trespassers. That they face trial for stepping on a land that they are going to be part of.

When representatives of Bangladesh and India sat down to talk about the enclaves and the headcounts, the how and wherefores, nobody thought about people like Aziza and people who were probably serving time for trespassing.

A senior foreign ministry official said this scenario was not even discussed in the negotiations and a home ministry high official said if there were cases like that then those will be handled as per laws. Are there any laws for these cases? “I don't know” was the answer.