Meghalaya Court Orders Foreigners Moved From Jail to a Hostel

The Meghalaya High Court on Monday ordered the state to move around 30 foreign nationals who have finished their jail terms into a Shillong hostel by September 28. Deportation orders exist in only four of those cases, so most of the group will still be in custody, just not in a prison cell.

The division bench of Chief Justice Revati Mohite Dere and Justice Wanlura Diengdoh set the date after a two-week fight over numbers the state had not put on the record. The holding place is the MBOSE Hostel at Laitumkhrah, a school-board building the Home (Political) Department named on September 17 once the court rejected a site at Nongstoin.

A Three-Storey Hostel in Laitumkhrah

The government’s Monday status report told the bench the hostel has around 60 beds in six dormitories and can take the people now past sentence. The court had already said a finished term does not belong in a district jail. The state’s first answer was that Meghalaya had no detention centre at all. The second answer was Nongstoin. The third is this hostel in Shillong.

Nongstoin is also where the prisons department lists a new district jail as under construction. The bench was not satisfied with that building as a holding centre, and the state switched the file to Laitumkhrah. Local posts on Tuesday named the hostel before they named the 10-year wait inside Shillong District Jail. The address is the part of the order that will be felt on a Shillong street.

WHAT THE HOSTEL IS SAID TO HOLD

• The building: A three-storey MBOSE Hostel at Laitumkhrah, with around 60 beds across six dormitories.
• The notice: The Home (Political) Department notified it as a temporary detention and holding centre on September 17.
• The rejected site: A building at Nongstoin, which the court would not accept for this purpose.
• The fit-out: The report promised security and administrative staff, medical staff, CCTV cameras and fire safety equipment.

The bench directed that the foreign nationals be moved to that facility at the earliest and, in any event, by September 28. A hostel bed is not a ticket home. It is the state’s way of taking these names off the prison unlock chart while the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer in Kolkata works the other half of the file.

The State Told the Bench There Was One Man

The case did not begin as a round-up of around 30 people. It began with a single Bangladeshi national, a six-month sentence, and a year still spent in jail after that term ended. On September 8 the same bench said holding him because the assistant high commissioner of Bangladesh had not confirmed nationality was not a lawful reason to keep him in prison.

“Detaining the Bangladeshi national beyond his sentence period, amounts to illegal detention of the said national,” the court said. It added that the wait for a mission’s reply can run for months or years, and that silence from that office is not a justification to keep someone past the prison term. Compensation, the judges warned, could follow if he stayed in the cell.

Additional Advocate General Khalid Khan had, on instructions in a letter dated August 28, told the court there was only one Bangladeshi national in that position. A court team then went to Shillong District Jail. On September 9, hearing a writ petition filed by the Registrar General, the bench called that letter “completely misleading and incorrect.”

HOW THE COUNT CAME INTO VIEW

1. September 8, 2026: The bench treats a Bangladeshi man held about a year past a six-month term as a case of illegal detention and warns that compensation may follow.
2. September 9, 2026: A court team finds 17 foreign nationals past sentence in Shillong District Jail, 15 of them Bangladeshi, one from Myanmar and one from Nigeria.
3. September 10, 2026: Home, prisons and foreigners-registration officers appear in person. The state puts a statewide list of about 28 names on record, except the prisoner at serial number 18, and promises holding centres within a week.
4. September 17, 2026: The Home (Political) Department notifies the MBOSE Hostel as the temporary centre after the Nongstoin proposal fails.
5. September 21, 2026: The status report puts the number still in jail after sentence at around 30. The court orders the move by September 28.
6. September 28, 2026: Transfer deadline and the next hearing, with officers told to appear in person or by video.

Inspector General of Prisons Zenith Sangma told the court there were no detention centres in the state for people who had finished their terms and were waiting to be sent home. Amicus curiae Tshering Yangi B. said her own jail visits had turned up 11 prisoners past sentence in three other lockups, four at Williamnagar, three at Tura and four at Nongpoh, though she could not say if those 11 were foreign nationals or Indian citizens. The prisons department lists five district jails in Meghalaya, at Shillong, Tura, Jowai, Williamnagar and Nongpoh, which is the map on which those extra names appeared.

A Letter That Did Not Match the Cells

The Shillong visit is the specimen the rest of the file has to live with. The Myanmar national had been in jail for more than 10 years after his sentence ended. One Bangladeshi national had been there for more than four years. The others, the court said, ranged from six months to a couple of years. The team also checked whether the men were getting facilities and legal aid, the basic duties a jail still owes someone it no longer has a sentence to enforce.

On September 10 the bench recorded that this information “was not provided to us” earlier. It issued notice to the inspector general of prisons asking why a show-cause notice should not go out under the Contempt of Courts Act, and then made clear that this notice was not itself a contempt notice. The warning sat on the record beside the new list of names.

Officials Appear After the Visit

In the courtroom that week were Rosetta Mary Kurbah, commissioner and secretary, Home (Political); Ryntihlang Rapthap, commissioner and secretary, Home (Prisons and Correctional Services); Sangma; and Vivek Syiem, superintendent of police-cum-Foreigners Registration Officer. They told the bench they would take steps with the embassies concerned. The state asked for time to file an affidavit on the holding centre and what would happen after it was named.

The court also pulled in the Meghalaya State Legal Services Authority. Member Secretary staff were told to help the prisoners with deportation and return papers, including applications to the Foreigners Registration Officer where a prisoner is married to an Indian citizen living in India and has children from that marriage. Those families are on the same list as the men with no ties here. The hostel will not sort that difference on its own.

Why a Finished Sentence Still Means Custody?

A criminal sentence ends when the term ends. After that, a foreign national may be held only for deportation, and even that wait is not meant to run on without limit. The Supreme Court has called detention after the term illegal under Article 21, and a Government of India circular dated November 25, 2009 told agencies to finish verification and deportation in 30 days.

We cannot countenance persons being incarcerated in jail, despite having completed their sentence. Of course, the question of compensation will be considered at an appropriate stage for all those who have been kept in prison beyond the period of sentence.

Chief Justice Revati Mohite Dere and Justice Wanlura Diengdoh, High Court of Meghalaya, September 9, 2026

The same order said the Supreme Court has noted, in several judgments, that detention after the period of imprisonment “is illegal and violates Article 21 of the Constitution of India.” It also said these foreign nationals “ought to have been moved to detention centres having completed their sentence as is required by law.” That is the legal slot the Laitumkhrah hostel is being asked to fill. It is a different slot from a conviction. It is still a locked door.

In February 2025 a Supreme Court bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice R. Mahadevan asked the Union what the point was of keeping hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals in detention camps and correctional homes after they had already served sentences under the Foreigners Act, 1946. The bench put the number then at almost 850 and asked for a current count. It pointed to clause 2(v) of the November 25, 2009 circular, which requires the whole exercise of verification and deportation to be completed within 30 days, and asked why that clause was not being followed.

“What is the idea in keeping hundreds of such illegal immigrants in Detention Camps/Correctional Homes for an indefinite period of time?” the bench asked. A separate sitting told Assam it could not detain declared foreigners “for eternity.” Post-sentence detention still before the Supreme Court in the transferred Maja Daruwala matter is the national version of the Meghalaya file: people whose punishment is over, waiting on missions and ministries to agree who will take them.

How Many Foreign Nationals Remain After Sentence?

The figure moved as the bench looked closer. A court team found 17 foreign nationals past sentence in Shillong District Jail on September 9. The state then produced a statewide list of about 28 names. The Monday status report put the number at around 30 still in jail after their terms.

THREE COUNTS IN 12 DAYS

Those are not three versions of one census fought over in the same hour. They are what appeared as the court forced the prisons department to look past a single name. The 17 were all in Shillong District Jail. The later lists are statewide. Serial number 18 was carved out of the about-28 tally without a public explanation in the order as summarised, so that cell stays as a gap, not a third total.

Four Deportation Orders and Indian Families

Nidhi Rani, Foreigners Regional Registration Officer, Kolkata, appeared by video on Monday and said deportation orders have been issued in four cases, with steps under way to send those people home. She also said work would follow in the other cases of foreign nationals who have finished their sentences and are still in jail. Four orders against around 30 names is the part of Monday’s hearing that the hostel cannot fix.

Most of the Shillong jail group the court actually counted were Bangladeshi. Missions do not always accept the state’s paperwork, and the September 8 order already treated that delay as a fact of the route, not a reason to keep a man in a cell. Conviction under orders under the Foreigners Act, 1946 is what the Supreme Court has treated as proof, for deportation purposes, that a person is not an Indian citizen. The Act gives the Centre power to restrict presence and to require a foreigner to leave. It does not turn a finished jail term into a new sentence while the ticket is pending.

Some of the people on the Meghalaya list are not only waiting on a mission. The September 10 order told legal services staff to help with Foreigners Registration Officer papers where a prisoner is married to an Indian citizen who lives in India and has children from that marriage. Those files are not a hostel problem. They are a status problem. A spouse and child in Meghalaya do not, on the face of that order, convert the finished sentence into a right to walk out. They do require a different set of forms than a man with no family on this side of the border.

FRRO Kolkata can issue a deportation order. The state can put a person on a bus to Laitumkhrah. Neither office can make Dhaka, Naypyidaw or Abuja print a travel document on the court’s calendar. That is why a 30-day circular from 2009 and a 10-year stay in Shillong District Jail exist in the same country.

Meghalaya Jails Already Run at 163.5 Percent

The inspector general’s first explanation, that there was nowhere else to put these people, sat on top of a prison system that was already far over its listed load. Prison Statistics India 2024, compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau as on December 31, 2024 and later tabled in the Rajya Sabha by Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar, counted 1,406 inmates against a capacity of 860. Occupancy was 163.5%, second in the country after Delhi.

PRISON LOAD ON DECEMBER 31, 2024

• Meghalaya: 1,406 inmates in space for 860, occupancy 163.5%, with 1,372 men (170.4% of male capacity) and 34 women.
• Delhi: Highest occupancy in the country at 194.6%, with 19,512 people in space for 10,026.
• All India: 511,542 inmates in space for 453,769, occupancy 112.7%.

Meghalaya’s jails were 546 people over the NCRB capacity on that date. Around 30 post-sentence foreign nationals are a small slice of 1,406. Moving them does not repair overcrowding. It does remove a group the court says has no business in those halls at all, in a system already holding more than one and a half times the beds it declares.

Shillong District Jail was the building the judges chose to walk. It is also the jail that held the Myanmar national for more than 10 years after his term, and the 15 Bangladeshi nationals the team counted on the same visit. When a state says it has no detention centre, this is what that sentence has meant in practice: the extra time is served in the same overcrowded district jail, on the same unlock, with the same staff who already told the court they had no other room.

Compensation Returns to Court on September 28

Monday’s order did not close the money question the bench floated on September 8 and again on September 9. It asked the state and the FRRO for the details of how compensation would be paid to foreign nationals kept in custody after their sentences. That note is now on the same calendar as the transfer itself. Officers have been told to appear in person or by video on September 28.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The deadline: All foreign nationals who have finished their sentences and are still in jail are to be moved to the temporary centre by September 28.
• The building: The MBOSE Hostel at Laitumkhrah, notified on September 17, with around 60 beds in six dormitories.
• The live count: Around 30 people on the Monday status report, after a jail visit that found 17 in Shillong and a statewide list of about 28 names.
• The deportation file: Orders issued in four cases, per FRRO Kolkata.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The full split: Nationality and jail-wise details for every person in the around-30 tally have not been read out in public beyond the Shillong visit.
• The flights: No date has been given for when the four people with deportation orders will actually leave.
• The payments: No sum, formula or list of eligible names has been fixed for compensation.
• The permanent centre: No timeline is on the record for a purpose-built detention centre once the hostel’s “temporary” label runs out.

The September 28 board will show whether the buses ran from the district jails to Laitumkhrah. It will not, on present papers, show who is getting on an aircraft. The hostel can take the names off the prison register. Sending them home still sits with the FRRO, the missions and a 30-day rule that this file has already missed by years.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on court orders and official filings. It is for information only and is not legal advice, nor a view on any person’s nationality, guilt or right to remain in India. Readers who need advice on detention, deportation, compensation or family status should consult a qualified advocate. Counts, dates and the status of the September 28 transfer reflect the court record and official reports cited here and may change at the next hearing.