Thiruvananthapuram: Five members of a Rohingya refugee family, including a six-month-old baby, were detained by the police on Tuesday, soon after they arrived here from Hyderabad.
The move comes after the Centre’s recent caution to state governments that Rohingya refugees are trying to cross the territories.
The detained family had come to India in 2012 and settled in Delhi and for the past three years were living in Hyderabad.
The detained persons have been identified as Thyoob (35), his wife Safura Khathoon (27), 25-year-old Arshad, 11-year-old Anversha and 6-month-old Saffiyan.
According to police, the family members had UN refugee identity cards and had applied for a visa in Hyderabad.
They told police that they came to Kerala looking for a job and reached Thiruvananthapuram on Monday around 8 pm boarding a train from Hyderabad.
They stayed overnight at the railway station on Monday and reached Vizhinjam on Tuesday.
The Jamaat president here informed the police about the family.
Police say that they will be taken back to their camp in Hyderabad.
According to the ID cards, they require to be protected from arbitrary detention or forcible return to Myanmar.
"The presence of Rohingya is confined not only to the northeastern states. They have reached south Indian states including Kerala," Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had recently said, calling all Rohingya in India "illegal immigrants."
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