Ever since July 2018, Azit Ali, a 28-year-old sepoy in the Indian Army, has been perplexed by one question. “How can I be a doubtful foreigner all of a sudden when I have served in the army for seven years already?” he asks.
Ali, a resident of Saru Harid village in western Assam’s Barpeta district, is referring to his name being missing from the complete draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was published in Assam last year. The reason for the exclusion, as he was informed, was a pending case against him suspecting him of being an illegal foreigner.
