NEW DELHI — India is illegally forcing its own Muslim citizens across the border into Bangladesh without due process, Human Rights Watch said in a report cited Friday by British newspaper The Independent.
Police across India are arbitrarily arresting thousands of Muslims, many of them Indian citizens from states bordering Bangladesh, the report said. Without due legal process, Narendra Modi’s government is then pushing them across the border into Bangladesh, the report said.
In a long report, Human Rights Watch called on the Indian government to halt the practice of illegally pushing people into another country without due process.
The U.S.-based rights group accused Modi’s Hindu nationalist government of targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims from West Bengal and Assam for political gain ahead of elections in two eastern states.
Citing Bangladeshi border forces, the rights group said India had pushed more than 1,500 Muslim men, women and children into Bangladesh between May 7 and June 15. New Delhi has not disclosed the number of people it has pushed into the neighboring country.
After 26 people were killed in a militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir in May, the Indian Home Ministry gave states a 30-day deadline to arrest illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
Critics said the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana and Delhi had detained mostly Bengali-speaking migrant workers from West Bengal and Assam. Bengali is one of India’s 22 official languages.
“India’s ruling BJP is fueling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengali Muslims, including Indian citizens, from the country,” Human Rights Watch Asia Director Elaine Pearson said. “The government is putting thousands of vulnerable people at risk, ostensibly to pursue undocumented immigrants. Their actions reflect a broader discriminatory policy against Muslims.”
A 51-year-old Indian Muslim laborer told Human Rights Watch that after midnight, Indian border guards shoved him across the border and he entered Bangladesh “like a corpse.”
“When I refused to cross the border, the BSF officer beat me and fired four blank rounds,” he said.
The migrant worker was returned to India two weeks later, Human Rights Watch said.
The Trinamool Congress, the ruling party in West Bengal, said it had brought back dozens of residents who had been forcibly pushed into Bangladesh by the Modi government.
At least 300 of those pushed into Bangladesh were residents of Assam, where a disputed 2019 citizenship verification process removed about 2 million people from the citizen list.
Nazimuddin Sheikh, a 34-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal, was detained in Mumbai. In June, police raided his home and “tore up his identity papers,” he said. He was later forcibly sent to Bangladesh.
Sheikh told Human Rights Watch that when he and his co-workers protested, claiming to be Indian, the BSF did not listen.
“When we spoke up repeatedly, they would beat us,” the Indian citizen said. “They struck me on the back and hands with sticks. After beating us, they told us to admit we were Bangladeshi.”
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called on the ruling party to halt the crackdown. “Is speaking Bengali a crime?” she said.
Addressing Modi, she said: “You should be ashamed that through this you are portraying all Bengali speakers as Bangladeshi.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report