Identity crisis leaves Telangana Dalit migrant languishing in UAE jail

A Telangana man from a Dalit community has been jailed in the UAE for illegal stay and is struggling to prove his Indian nationality due to lack of documents. His family has approached authorities seeking help to bring him home.

Dubai : A poor man hailing from the Dalit community in Telangana has been languishing in jail in the Gulf, struggling to prove that he is an Indian national in order to return home and reunite with his family after nearly two decades.

Mandula Rajanna (59), a native of Madhapur village in Soan mandal of Nirmal district, came to the UAE in 2007 to work for a construction company. A year later, he ran away from the company and became an illegal resident in the country.

---

Illiterate and belonging to a Scheduled Caste, Rajanna, who hails from a remote village in the erstwhile Adilabad district, is facing a difficult task in establishing his nationality to make his way back home. Neither Rajanna nor his family possesses a copy of his passport. His name does not figure in the voter list. When he left India 18 years ago, Aadhaar was not mandatory and many vulnerable people in rural areas were not registered. Having never attended school, he has no educational records, and the absence of voter identity documents has further complicated efforts to prove his Indian citizenship.

According to Rajanna, there was no biometric registration when he landed in Sharjah in 2007. His passport was taken into possession by the company that employed him, a common practice at the time. After he fled the firm and it later shut down, there was no trace of either the original passport or a copy. Debt-ridden and a father of two, Rajanna had borrowed money under the Gulf gold loan system, which was popular in Telangana, where youth pledged gold in tolas and were required to return a higher weight as interest. Rajanna borrowed four tolas of gold and was required to repay six tolas. Owing to employment difficulties, he failed to clear the loan on time and continued to stay in the UAE illegally.

Although the UAE authorities announced several amnesty schemes allowing foreigners to leave the country voluntarily without punitive action, Rajanna did not avail himself of them. After years of toiling in deserts and doing odd jobs, he eventually cleared his debt. In the meantime, his children, Nitish and Nikhita, grew up.

Rajanna was later arrested for illegal stay. Officials from the Indian Embassy visited him at the detention centre but asked him to submit a passport copy or other relevant documents, which he was unable to provide. His wife, Laxmi, has approached the Chief Minister’s grievances cell in Hyderabad and the District Collector in Nirmal, seeking assistance in proving her husband’s Indian nationality. The only document the family possesses is a photo passbook of a bank account in Rajanna’s name.