A team headed by Bankura’s Bishnupur sub-divisional officer Anup Kumar Dutta on Tuesday handed over the voter identity card to Gangadhar Pramanik, who had till recently been kept in a detention centre in Assam for over three years as a “foreigner”.

“We handed over the EPIC (electoral photo identity card) to Gangadhar Pramanik. He was visibly happy after getting the document that made him a voter. It will be easier for him now to get documents like Aadhaar,” said Anup Kumar Dutta, the SDO of Bishnupur under which Gangadhar’s village Radhanagar falls.

In December 2017, while working at a roadside eatery in Assam, he was declared a foreigner and sent to a detention centre in Goalpara.

This September, he got bail after volunteers of Citizens for Peace and Justice brought him to his Radhanagar home.

“For all of us at CJP, especially CJP’s Team Assam, this gives us hope that there is always light at the end of the tunnel,” said Teesta Setalvad, CJP secretary.

“It will help Gangadharji in renewing his faith and rebuilding his life brick by brick. The authorities must realise how cruel this citizenship exclusion process is with arbitrary actions leading to innocents being incarcerated,” she added.

Soon after Gangadhar reached home in September, the Bengal government took immediate steps to confirm his Indian citizenship and started the process to prepare the required documents without he had been labelled a “foreigner”.