Assam's Hasina Bhanu Won A 20-Year Legal Battle To Prove She Was Indian. It Came At A Cost
After her citizenship was first questioned in 1997, an Assam housewife was held to be Indian in 2016 by a quasi-judicial body called a foreigner’s tribunal. Five years later, the same tribunal declared her a foreigner and sent her to a detention camp, before the high court struck down the flip-flop. She is now free, but two decades of litigation have left her debilitated and her family in debt.

Hasina Bhanu laying on her bed at her home in Shyampur village of Dalgaon town in Darrang district of Assam/PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRISHBHANU BARUAH