Guwahati: The Supreme Court has restored Indian citizenship to a man from Assam’s Dhubri district, who was declared a foreigner two years ago, because of a mismatch in the spelling of his grandfather’s name.The court of justices RF Nariman and Vineet Saran, in their order on Thursday, stated that a Foreigner’s Tribunal had declared appellant Sirajul Haque a foreigner after finding that there was a discrepancy in the name of his grandfather and the fact that the grandfather and the father later lived in different villages.Haque moved the apex court after his first appeal against the foreigners’ tribunal was rejected by the Gauhati high court on technical grounds.“…we find that a number of documents have been relied upon by the appellant starting with a voters’ list of his grandfather Kematullah in village Sotobashjani. There is no doubt that the great grandfather’s name Amtullah appears as Amtullah throughout the document. Equally, there is no doubt about the father’s name which appears as Hakim Ali throughout. The only discrepancy found is that in some of the documents Kefatullah later becomes Kematullah,” the Supreme Court observed.The court observed that the NRC Registration details of the year 1971 of his grandfather is noted to be Kefatullah. “Other voters lists are then produced where the letter F (in Kefatullah) becomes the letter M (as in Kematullah) with other family names remaining the same. In fact, the appellant has himself produced a document of 1981 from the Income Tax Department giving his Permanent Account Number. Apart from these documents, certain other later documents have also been produced, including photo identity cards issued by the Election Commission of India and identity cards issued to his brother, including voters lists in which the appellant’s name appears,” the court stated.The court ordered, “Having gone through these documents, we are of the view that it is not possible to state that Kematullah is not the same despite being named Kefatullah in some of the documents. This being so, the grandfather’s identity, father’s identity etc. has been established successfully by the appellant. Further, the mere fact that the father may later have gone to another village is no reason to doubt this document,” while setting aside the judgment of the Gauhati high court, as well as the Foreigner’s Tribunal, and allowed Haque to be set free at once.

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