Six detention centres in Assam with capacity of 3,331 persons, 10 inmates died since March 2019, MHA informs Lok Sabha

New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday informed the Lok Sabha about six detention centres in Assam with a capacity of 3,331 persons. “There are six detention centres in Assam having a capacity of 3,331 persons. The detention centre in Tezpur has a capacity of 797 persons, Silchar (479), Dibrugarh (680), Jorhat (670), Kokrajhar (335) and Goalpara (370),” said the Home Ministry in a reply to Nusrat Jahan Ruhi, Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP. [caption id=“attachment_4853661” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] The TMC lawmaker had asked the Home Ministry about detention centres in Assam and their capacity. Responding to a question on new detention centres which are yet to be constructed and made operational in Assam, the Ministry said a detention centre at Matia, Goalpara with a capacity of 3,000 is under construction. Nusrat asked the Home Ministry about the number of people died in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) detention camps in the North-Eastern states especially in Assam during the last one year. “There is no NRC detention camp/centre in the state of Assam. 10 inmates of the six detention centres in Assam, where declared foreigners/convicted foreigners are kept, died in different hospitals from 1 March, 2019, to 29 February, 2020,” the Home Ministry said. “During the said time frame, three teams of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) have visited detention centres in Assam and have interacted with declared foreign nationals,” it added.