SC stays deportation of two students to strife-torn Sudan

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the deportation of two Sudanese students and asked the Centre to respond by next week to a petition challenging their deportation.

A bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud was initially reluctant to entertain the petition when senior counsel Colin Gonsalves pleaded for stay of the order passed by the Delhi-based Foreigners Regional Registration Office on December 28, 2016, directing deportation of Amir Ahmed Khamis Ahmed and Aliu Bilal Salih Eisa.

They were ordered to be deported after they left Bengaluru, where they were staying as refugees for the last three years, and came to Delhi without permission. The Delhi high court approved the government’s decision and an appeal was directed against this order. The students are at present in detention camp in Narela in the national capital.

Mr Gonsalves told the court that the students are brothers and their family members had been killed and if they are deported, they will be killed in Sudan because of the civil war there.

The CJI told counsel, “They had finished their studies in India, they cannot flout the local laws and vanish. When other countries don’t even hand over criminals to us when we ask them, why should we show magnanimity? You (lawyer) just close your eyes and think if somebody does the same in US, what will happen?”

Mr Gonsalves submitted that in Europe they would have been punished for their illegal action but not deported to their country. He said that the United Nations High Commissio-ner on Refugees and the government should take a call on their fate. When he pleaded, “I (his client) will suffer,” the Chief Justice shot back, “What suffer? There is a breach (of law).”

However, the bench finally relented and stayed the deportation of the two students, sought the Centre’s response, and directed the matter to be listed on February 20.