Bangladesh's charge d'affaires to Thailand previously said that none of the boatpeople recently expelled from Thailand would be allowed into Bangladesh because they were not citizens.

But Bangladeshi diplomats in Calcutta said this week that from an initial list provided by India, Bangladeshi investigations had confirmed that 49 had legitimate claims to residency or citizenship.

'From Indian authorities we received a list of 67 people who claimed to be from Bangladesh. On verification of their addresses as stated on the list, our home ministry found only 49 of them as Bangladeshis and we are ready to take all of them back,' said diplomat A. T. M. Monemul Haque in Calcutta.

India is currently detaining 451 boatpeople in the Andaman Islands, including at least 386 who were towed out to sea and abandoned by the Thai army.

The other 65 are believed to be mostly from another vessel packed with boatpeople that arrived in the Andamans on January 9. Bangladeshi sources said the vessel arrived in the Andamans after sailing directly from Bangladesh.

India listed 413 of the detainees as Bangladeshis and 38 as Myanmese, based on their residency claims. Police in the Andamans' capital, Port Blair, have sent the full lists to both countries in an effort to have them repatriated.

'We have sent the lists of the rescued boatpeople to the Bangladeshi and Myanmese authorities,' Andaman Islands criminal investigations chief Ashok Chand said.

'From the first list of 67, Bangladesh has identified 49 as Bangladeshi nationals and they are on their way to be handed over to Bangladeshi authorities soon.'

'All who get identified by Bangladesh from the remaining lists will be handed over to Bangladesh in due course.'

Uncertainty still surrounds the fate of other Rohingya rescued from five shipwrecks or drifting boats near the Andamans and Indonesia since late December.

Forcibly expelled in powerless boats by Thailand, they have been disowned by the nations where they washed ashore, and those from where they departed.

Although most are believed to be ethnic Rohingya who hail mainly from Myanmar, the junta there has refused to acknowledge or accept them. India, Thailand and Indonesia have also refused to accept them.

Mr Haque said the 49 so far accepted by Bangladesh would be sent by ship to Calcutta soon, then transferred to Bangladesh.

A police source in the Bangladeshi port of Cox's Bazar - the hub for the illegal smuggling of Rohingya boatpeople - said the 18 migrants rejected by Bangladesh were probably from Myanmar.

'Those bogus addresses on the list are in all probability from Rohingyas who just arrived from Myanmar for the purpose of going to Malaysia, by the illegal sea route. They are neither Bangladeshis nor Rohingyas who have legally settled [in UN-identified camps] in Bangladesh,' said the police officer.

Rohingya expert Hamid Hossain - who has written a thesis on the ethnic group and their migration patterns and who works in an office at a UN-backed Rohingya camp near Cox's Bazar - said he had seen the list of 67 boatpeople forwarded by the Indians and he believed that 90 per cent on the list were ethnic Rohingyas.

Among those being sent back to Bangladesh is 18-year-old Rohingya youth Akhtar Hossain, who was interviewed by the South China Morning Post last month as he recovered in Port Blair from his ordeal.

Mr Akhtar was on a powerless barge expelled by the Thai military in December. More than 300 out of a shipload of about 400 died, most drowning when they jumped overboard upon sighting a distant island.

The rest, emaciated and without food or water, were rescued by the Indian coastguard a day later.