Police in India’s state Assam has arrested a retired army officer, who has fought the Kargil war for India and won a president’s medal, and sent him to a detention camp after being declared an alien by the tribunal.

Assam has the largest Muslim population among other states of India. People here have been troubled after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has directed them to prove that their families lived in India before March 24, 1971.

Acknowledging the fact that Mohammed Sana Ullah had served in army for 30 years, police said the 52-year-old man was arrested on order of the Foreigners’ Tribunal. Interestingly, the Muslim man is currently a deputy inspector in Assam police.

Also Read: 1.9 million residents in India’s Assam stripped of citizenship

Reuters has quoted a police officer as saying that he was oblivious of the fact that on what grounds the ex-army officer was stripped of his citizenship.

Speaking to the British news agency, Sana Ullah said the Modi government was rewarding him for serving the country for decades. His family said they had record of land from 1935. While, his lawyer has said that the war veteran was being mistaken as a labourer who entered the country after 1971.

On August 31, the Indian government had stripped about 1.9 million residents of Assam state of their citizenship at the strike of a pen.

As per media reports, under the National Register of Citizens (NRC) people, who could prove they had arrived in India a day before Bangladesh had declared independence on March 24, 1971, were listed as citizens, while the people who could not get a place in the list had been given 120 days to appeal against their exclusion.

The NRC was established in 1951 to determine who was born in Assam. The list had been first time updated ever since and about 31.1 million people had been included in it.