My wife, Neelima Sharma and I have never felt so helpless and ashamed in life as for almost last 10 days we remained and continue to be spectators to the brutal repression of West Bengal Indian Muslims. They are being rounded up by plainclothes men (many times abusive, no queries allowed) even in late night hours and taken to different police stations in Gurgaon. They were/are being picked up for being illegal migrants. The victims have alleged that even before asking for citizenship proofs, they were brutally thrashed for hours and then taken to one or more police stations to be given more doses of lawless justice. A trademark dialogue by thrasher/s is “YAHAN MAMTA DIDI KA RAJ NAHEEN HAE, MODI KA RAJ HAE’ [Mamta does not rule here but Modi].
Many are released paying what ‘price’, nobody knows as victims are too fearful of the repercussions. The condition of the women of the families of the detainees outside detention centres is to be seen and believed. According to police many more are at detention centres, as Aadhaar and voting cards or no more ‘legal’ documents, to prove one’s Indian citizenship.
I wrote a letter [The text of the letter is reproduced below] to West Bengal Resident Commissioner (Ms. Ujjaini Datta), Deputy Resident Commissioner (Mr. Rajdeep Datta), and Assistant Director of Information (Mr. Ashis Jana) on July 16, 2025, copied to all PUCLs, their office-bearers. Since received no response from the Resident Commissioner’s office called at their office numbers. Till writing this note nobody has responded.
In the meantime, victims known to us told that they come from a WB constituency which is represented by Trinamool Congress MLA, Ms. Rekha Roy. We also came to know that her husband Nukul Dada manages her affairs. We called his number. He seemed to be in hurry, cut short my narration and disconnected.
The most of victims are devout Muslims but even Indian Muslim organizations which we find leaving no stone unturned for enforcing Shariat, triple talaq and purdah are missing from the scene!
(excerpt from Countercurrents)
Several BJP-ruled states have intensified their crackdown on Bengali Muslim migrant workers, many of whom live in poverty, without first verifying their citizenship status.
In Maharashtra, the authorities have detained and expelled to Bangladesh several people who were internal migrants from India’s West Bengal state, which borders Bangladesh. In Mumbai, the authorities detained and expelled at least seven workers from West Bengal, who were allowed to return only after the West Bengal state government intervened to confirm their citizenship.
Nazimuddin Sheikh, 34, a migrant worker from West Bengal, had worked as a mason in Mumbai for five years before being detained on June 9 and expelled to Bangladesh. He said the police raided his home, seized his mobile phone, and tore up his identity documents, which were proof of his citizenship. They then flew him in a BSF plane along with over 100 others to Tripura state, which borders Bangladesh. “The [BSF] did not listen to us when we told them we are Indian,” he said. “If we spoke too much, they beat us. They hit me with sticks on my back and hands. They were beating us and telling us to say we are Bangladeshi.”
Sheikh said he was forced to cross into Bangladesh with eight others. When he reached a village in Bangladesh, the residents let him call his relatives and then took him to a local outpost of Border Guard Bangladesh. On June 15, Bangladesh border guards handed him over to Indian officials.
The West Bengal chief minister has called out BJP state governments, saying “Is speaking Bengali a crime? You should be ashamed that by doing this, you’re making everyone who speaks Bengali appear to be Bangladeshi.”
The media reported that between April and May, authorities in BJP-run Gujarat state demolished over 10,000 structures, including homes, businesses, and mosques, without due process in the Chandola Lake area and nearby Siyasat Nagar in Ahmedabad. The authorities claimed these structures were in unauthorized settlements where “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants” lived. These arbitrary and punitive demolitions violate a November 2024 Supreme Court ruling that sets out steps the authorities must take before any such actions.
In June, UN human rights experts condemned the demolitions, saying “‘national security’ and ‘foreign nationality’ should never be used as a pretext to justify the forced eviction of communities without legal safeguards.” As part of this crackdown, the police detained 890 people in Ahmedabad, including 219 women and 214 children, and reportedly paraded them for four kilometers through city streets. Gujarat authorities claimed they are taking strict “action against infiltrators” and had detained nearly 6,500 people across the state, and said anyone providing support or “shelter to infiltrators would face severe consequences.”
“Several cases involve residents from various districts of West Bengal being detained in Gujarat, despite presenting multiple valid forms of identification,” wrote Samirul Islam, a member of the Indian parliament and the chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board, in a letter to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah on May 3. “Even more alarming are reports of entire Bengali-speaking settlements being targeted and set ablaze, resulting in the destruction of vital documents and the forced displacement of families.”
In early July, the authorities in Odisha’s Jharsuguda district said they had rounded up 444 migrant workers, all men, most working in construction or mining. Currently, 44 of them remain in two holding centers in the district.
In Rajasthan state, authorities reportedly detained over 1,000 undocumented migrants across 17 districts, alleging they were “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. At least 148 people were expelled to Bangladesh. Activists in the state said many undocumented migrants and workers from tribal communities were being detained and harassed arbitrarily.
In Jaipur, on May 3, police detained a 25-year-old man from a marginalized tribal community and his 19-year-old cousin after asking them their names and told them to show their voter identity cards and other documents. “Police never gave us a reason for detaining them,” said the man’s father. “But we ran from one place to another to show the police and the district collector their school transfer certificates as proof.” The authorities finally released both men on May 28 after the father presented his family’s land record and voter registrations in Rajasthan.
(excerpt from Human Rights Watch)
