In a heart-wrenching incident, a 104-year-old man of Assam’s Cachar district has died after fighting to verify his Indian citizenship for the past two years. Chandradhar Das, a resident of the Amraghat area under the Dholai police station in the Cachar district, was declared a foreigner by a Foreigners’ Tribunal two years back.

He passed away on Sunday at his home, after struggling hard to prove his Indian citizenship. Until his last breath, the old man was hopeful that his plight will be ended through the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. The centenarian wanted to die as an Indian citizen.

Das was declared a foreigner by a Foreigners’ Tribunal in Silchar in January 2018 and he was sent to Silchar detention camp.   “Das was unhealthy and he had various old-age problems, could barely walk while he was in jail. When his health condition started deteriorating, we had filed a bail petition before the court and the court granted his bail petition on humanitarian grounds,” Das’s lawyer Soumen Chowdhury said.

Later, he was released on bail and was living with his family at his residence. Chowdhury said Chandradhar Das claimed that he had a refugee registration certificate issued in 1966 in Tripura’s Agartala and the documents stated that, Das was born in Comilla in then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). “But the document is yet to be verified by the concerned authority in Tripura and for that reason, the case was pending,” Souman Chowdhury said.

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