On 16 May, when presented with a petition citing media reports about the Indian government allegedly abandoning some 40 Rohingya refugees at sea near the southeastern coast of Myanmar, the Supreme Court of India’s immediate reported response was seemingly to doubt the claims.
"A very beautifully crafted story."
That's how Justice Surya Kant, sitting on the bench along with Justice N Kotiswar Singh, verbally referred to the serious allegations, according to Livelaw.
A detailed investigation by The Quint, based on interviews of the deportees’ family members in Delhi, provides additional confirmation of what appears to be an extraordinarily cruel act of forced deportation of a highly vulnerable refugee group by the Indian government. A local fisherman in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region, near whose coast Indian authorities are alleged to have dropped the refugees, told The Straits Times that he saw the refugees “swim to the shore” holding a rope thrown to them by a local ship’s crew.
But the bench appeared not just unconvinced by the evidence presented, but also somewhat indignant at the petition’s timing. On being informed that the petitioner had managed to speak to the deportees in Myanmar over telephone, the judge reportedly said, “When the country is going through a difficult time, you come out with such fanciful ideas!”