Guwahati, June 30: Can you age just three years between 1997 and 2010 or be four years younger to your mother? Yes, you can. All you have to do is follow Durjan Ali’s example.

Be warned, though, that you might be labelled an illegal migrant and deported, as Gauhati High Court has ordered in Ali’s case.

This “gentleman” from Baghmara village in Chaygaon area of Kamrup district tried to prove the Foreigners Tribunal wrong by submitting in the high court documents replete with contradictions.

The documents in possession with The Telegraph included the 1997 voter list that said Ali was 28.

Also included was a sworn affidavit that pegged Ali’s age at 31 on November 4, 2010.

Ali had filed the writ petition in the high court challenging a Foreigners Tribunal, Kamrup, order dated May 14, 2010, declaring him an illegal migrant from Bangladesh.

“His age has increased by only three years from 1997 to November 4, 2010, the date on which he had sworn an affidavit in support of the writ petition describing his age as 31 years,” Justice B.K. Sharma said in an order passed recently, upholding the Foreigners Tribunal order.

The high court also found other discrepancies and contradictions in the documents. For instance, in the 1997 voter list, his age was 28, his mother Dudhjan Nessa was 32 and his father Mohammed Ali was 42.

“Thus, the petitioner was only four years younger than his mother. When the learned counsel for the petitioner was asked to explain these discrepancies, there was no answer,” Justice Sharma said.

“There is inherent contradiction in the own case of the petitioner. It is very easy to pick up any name from the voter list, claiming the same to be that of one’s great grandfather or grandfather,” the court said, adding that after dealing with scores of foreigners’ cases, it had found that voter lists contained similar/identical names.

Justice Sharma said it would be “totally unsafe to swallow” the story of a petitioner that any similar/identical name on the voter list was that of his grandfather or great grandfather without proper evidence.

In this particular case, the court order said in the ration card produced by Ali before the tribunal, the name of the original holder, Imtiaz Ali, had been scored off and replaced by Mohammed Ali (the name of petitioner’s father) without any authorisation and endorsement.

“Similarly, the name of Faizuddin had also been scored off and replaced by Wassil (name of the petitioner’s grandfather). Moreover, two vital pages of the said special family identity card had also been removed. The petitioner could not furnish any explanation in respect of the same neither before the tribunal nor before this court,” the order said.

“If the petitioner is really a citizen of India by birth there was no necessity for him to produce a forged family identity card,” the order said.

The court upheld the foreigners tribunal’s order and asked police and the district administration “to take consequential action towards deportation of the petitioner from India and deletion of his name from the voter list”.