Kovai Railway police step up watch over Rohingya movement

“Following reports that a large number of Rohingyas are heading to Kerala by train, we have increased the surveillance in the trains that are coming from north east. It is a general alert and nothing specific. So far, we haven’t found any movement through Coimbatore. We are carrying out routine checks in trains,” said M Lawrence, inspector of police (railway), Coimbatore railway police station.

A team led by an inspector, two SI’s and few cops were involved in checks in the train coming from the north east. 

Rohingyas are an ethnic minority of Myanmar, who began fleeing their country from August 2017, after a crackdown by the Myanmarese military that the UN likened to ‘ethnic cleansing with signs of genocide through killings, rapes and the razing of houses that year’. 

The Indian government has called all Rohingyas illegal immigrants and has asked all state governments to obtain their biometrics and other details in order to deport them to Myanmar.