Guwahati: Seven Rohingya children, who were on their way to Assam, have been detained on Sunday by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) at a railway station in Tripura.

While checking the station and train compartments, the RPF team detained the children (six girls and a boy) from the Dharamnagar railway station in northern Tripura. They were trying to go to Badarpur in southern Assam’s Karimganj district.

A top officer of the RPF said that the children, who were accompanied by touts, reached Dharamnagar from Agartala by bus and intended to go to Badarpur by train.

“All are under 18. They were handed over to Tripura Police for further legal formalities,” the officer added.

The RPF official further said that the touts managed to escape.

“The  children were carrying railway tickets to Badarpur. They were probably being trafficked by middlemen,” the officer said.

The children will be lodged in a juvenile home run by the Tripura government.

History of Rohingya infiltration

Recently, 68 Rohingya Muslims, mostly children, were arrested by police in Tripura and Assam’s Karimganj district.

On January 21, the Assam Police had arrested 30 Rohingyas, including 12 children, from a Guwahati-bound passenger bus (AS-25CC-8685) that came from Agartala to the Churaibari area in Karimganj district.

On January 3, five Rohingyas, including two women, were deported to Myanmar via Manipur’s Moreh town along the India-Myanmar border. These illegal immigrants entered India in 2014 and stayed in a detention camp inside the Tezpur jail of Assam’s Sonitpur district.

In October last year, seven Rohingyas were deported to Myanmar.