A woman from Assam’s Cachar district has become the first declared foreigner in the country to acquire Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), her lawyer said on Saturday.

The 59-year-old, Depali Das, was declared an illegal immigrant by a foreigners’ tribunal (FT) in February 2019 and sent to the Silchar detention centre on May 10 that year. She was released on May 17, 2021, following a Supreme Court order, after spending nearly two years in detention.

Foreigners’ tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies tasked with determining questions of citizenship.

“Depali applied for citizenship under the CAA in February 2025 and received her certificate of naturalisation on Friday. She is the first declared foreigner in India to acquire citizenship under the CAA. Her citizenship will be effective from February 7, 1988, the year she entered India with her husband, Abhimanyu Das, from Bangladesh due to religious persecution. All her documents made in India are now valid,” her lawyer, Dharmananda Das, told The Telegraph.

Depali originally hailed from Dippur village under Dhirai police station in Bangladesh’s Sylhet district. She married Abhimanyu, who also hailed from Bangladesh, in 1987 before migrating to India the following year.

Her citizenship issue surfaced in 2013 when police initiated a probe alleging she was a Bangladeshi national who had entered India after March 21, 1971 — the cut-off date for identifying and deporting illegal immigrants under the 1985 Assam Accord. Das said the police chargesheet later became crucial in establishing her eligibility as a persecuted migrant under the CAA.

The couple have one son and five daughters, all born in Hawaithang under the Dholai assembly constituency of Cachar district.

The CAA, passed by Parliament in 2019, offers a path to citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. The rules enabling implementation were notified in 2024. The law faced strong opposition in the Brahmaputra Valley but enjoyed support in the Bengali-majority Barak Valley, which comprises Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj districts.

According to Das, at least six persons from Barak Valley — including four from
Cachar — have so far acquired citizenship under the CAA in Assam.