Kerala: 5-member Rohingya family detained in Thiruvananthapuram

The family was carrying UN refugee IDs.

Thiruvananthapuram: Vizhinjam Police have on Tuesday identified a five-member Rohingya family and taken them into custody. According to the preliminary investigation, the family arrived from Hyderabad to Thiruvananthapuram. 

The Rohingya family travelled to Vizhinjam from the railway station in a rickshaw. They were carrying United Nations (UN) refugee Identity cards, the police added.

Thiruvananthapuram: Vizhinjam Police has taken a 5-member Rohingya family into custody. As per preliminary probe, the family arrived from Hyderabad to Thiruvananthapuram & travelled to Vizhinjam from the railway station in a rickshaw. They were carrying UN refugee ID card.#Kerala pic.twitter.com/WsMeZtBnTP — ANI (@ANI) October 2, 2018

As per a news report by The News Minute, the five members have been identified as Sayub (36), his wife Safiya Kathum (29), his brother Irshad (27), Safiya's brother Anwar Shah (11) and her six-month-old baby Safiyan.

Over the last year, more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh, according to UN agencies, following a military response to attacks on security posts by Rohingya insurgents. 

A recent UN report accused Myanmar's military of gang rapes and mass killings with "genocidal intent" in Rakhine and called for its commander-in-chief and five generals to be prosecuted under international law.

Myanmar has denied most of the allegations in the report, blaming Rohingya "terrorists" for most accounts of atrocities.

(With inputs from Reuters)