An Indian couple has claimed that their son was wrongly sent to the United States under the third country resettlement programme for Bhutanese refugees.

Ram Prasad Sharma and his wife Sakila from Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal state of India said that their 11-year-old son, Bishnu, is in the US with Sharma’s first wife Bishnumaya Pokharel.

Sharma, a former Bhutanese national, took Indian citizenship and married Sakila as Bishnumaya was sterile. The couple said that they had let their son stay with Bishnumaya to keep her company. Bishnumaya had been staying at the Beldangi-based refugee camp in Jhapa district by herself. “At her (Bishnumaya) request we sent our son to stay with her, but when we arrived there for Dashain festival they had left already,” Sakila said. According to Sharma, unlike his first wife, Bishnumaya, he did not flee to Nepal when the Bhutanese government started persecuting the Nepali speaking populace of Bhutan.

“I spent many years in Assam of India and later obtained Indian citizenship,” he said, adding that he met Sakila in India and married her with the consensus of his first wife. The couple has brought their son’s birth certificate to prove his non-refugee status.

It was found that 11-year-old Bishnu was also registered as a Bhutanese refugee under Bishnumaya’s maiden name some two years ago. The records, however, do not mention the boy’s registration number and the date of his arrival at the camp. Police record showed that Bishnumaya had filed a complaint claiming that her husband, Sharma, had gone missing.

The Sharma couple said that when they sought justice from the Jhapa District Administration Office (DAO), officials there rebuked them and threw away their application. Organisations working for the refugees claimed that Nepali government officials are responsible for the incident as they provided false details about Bishnu.

“There has been negligence on the part of government officials who granted an Indian boy the status of a Bhutanese refugee,” said Dr. Bhampa Rai of Bhutan Refugee Representative Repatriation Committee. He added that it was possible that there might other cases of falsification of records in the resettlement programme initiated by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). When asked to comment, the UNHCR Kathmandu office said it was aware of the problem, but declined to discuss the case. “We are following up the case. However, we are not in a position to discuss individual cases,” the office said.