- विज्ञापन -
New Delhi, May 19: In a case related to Sri Lankan refugees, the Supreme Court said on Monday that India is not a Dharamshala. Why should we give shelter to refugees from all over the world? We are struggling with 140 crore people. We cannot give shelter to refugees from everywhere.
Justice Dipankar Dutta and Justice K. Vinod Chandran’s bench made this remark while rejecting the asylum petition of a Sri Lankan Tamil citizen.
In fact, the Madras High Court had ordered the Sri Lankan citizen to leave India immediately after completing his 7-year sentence in the UAPA case. Against this, he had filed a petition in the Supreme Court and demanded intervention.
R. Sudhakaran, S. Prabhu Ramasubramanian and Vairavan AS argued on behalf of the petitioner in the court.
The petitioner was declared a wanted person in Sri Lanka
The petitioner told the Supreme Court that he had come to India on a visa. His life is in danger in Sri Lanka. His wife and children are settled in India, and he has been in custody for three years, but the deportation process has not started.
The petitioner said that he had fought in the Sri Lankan war in 2009 as a member of the LTTE and was therefore declared ‘black-gazetted’ (wanted) in Sri Lanka. If he was deported, he could face arrest and torture. He also said that his wife was suffering from several ailments and his son was suffering from congenital heart disease.
Recently, the Supreme Court also refused to interfere in the deportation of Rohingya refugees.
Understand the whole matter
The case pertains to a Sri Lankan Tamil national who was arrested along with two others by the Q Branch of the Tamil Nadu police in 2015 on suspicion of being linked with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The LTTE was a terrorist organisation previously active in Sri Lanka. In 2018, a lower court had sentenced the petitioner to 10 years imprisonment under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
In 2022, the Madras High Court increased the sentence to seven years and said that after completion of the sentence, he would have to leave the country and stay in a refugee camp before deportation.
