Guwahati, May 3 (IANS): The Assam police on Sunday detained 27 Bangladeshi nationals who entered the state before COVID-19 lockdown on a tourist visa, but their visa has now expired, officials said.

The Bangladeshi nationals, including women and children, were held at Bahalpur under Chapar police station in the bordering Dhubri district (western Assam) during a routine checkup.

Dhubri District Superintendent of Police Yuvraj Singh said that there was an advisory from the External Affairs ministry about the foreign nationals who are in India, but the validity of their visa expired.

"We are now examining their travel document and would act according to the law and the government's latest guidelines," the district police chief told IANS over phone.

The two vehicles, in which the Bangladeshi people are travelling, were also seized by the police.

An Assam government official said that the Bangladeshi nationals were travelling in two mini-buses from Upper Assam's Jorhat district, around 470 km east of Chapar, on curfew passes issued in the name of a local Indian contractor.

Of Assam's 33 districts, five districts -- Dhubri, Golaghat, Nalbari, Marigaon and Goalpara -- in the orange zone. Dhubri has a total of five positive cases of COVID-19 and four patients have already been released after their recovery from the novel coronavirus.

The Dhubri district health authority on Saturday confirmed that COVID-19 test done on the random samples of 158 individuals turned out to be negative.

Assam has a 263-km border with Bangladesh, where the total number of confirmed corona positive cases crossed 8,800, while the death toll has increased to 178 with the virus spreading to 61 of the country's 64 districts including the capital city Dhaka.

Dhubri District also shared inter-state borders with West Bengal and Meghalaya.

The Union Home Ministry had suspended passengers' movement through all land immigration checkposts on the country's borders with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar from March 15 midnight.