Four civil-rights, lawyers’ and workers’ organisations have alleged that hundreds of migrant workers were detained from various parts of Bengaluru, India, in an alleged drive to identify “Bangladeshis,” including women and children. The claims were made in a complaint filed with Karnataka’s home minister, the director general of police and the Bengaluru police commissioner.
The complaint — filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the All India Lawyers Association for Justice, the Domestic Workers Rights Union and the All India Central Council of Trade Unions — alleged “illegal detention, beatings and inhumane treatment” during police operations.
The organisations said that early on Saturday, police went house to house in various slums and working-class areas demanding to see identity documents. Even after documents were shown, many were forcibly detained and taken in police jeeps or buses to police stations, convention centres, marriage halls and other places.
According to the complaint, in this drive to identify alleged Bangladeshis, more than 200 people were detained in the Bandepalya area, about 150 in Hebbagodi and more than 400 in the Parappana Agrahara area, with many others alleged to have been detained in the Varthur, Somasundarapalya, Whitefield, Mahadevapura and Marathahalli areas.
The organisations also alleged that several people detained at Varthur police station were beaten with sticks. They claimed police broke the door and CCTV of a settlement in Hebbagodi and seized more than 50 mobile phones, and that personal messages and call records were examined from the phones of those detained in various areas. Some people were sent to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office on the basis of phone calls or records showing international numbers, the groups said, arguing that “having another country’s number on a phone is not proof of foreign citizenship.”
Calling the drive “illegal and constitutionally unacceptable,” the complainants said no one could be detained without due process. The four organisations demanded the immediate release of those detained, treatment for the injured, an independent investigation into the whole episode and action against the police involved, as well as the preservation of CCTV footage and other records and compensation for those affected.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report