NEW DELHI: India has forcibly expelled hundreds of people, mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims, to Bangladesh without trial, drawing condemnation from activists and lawyers who call the recent expulsions illegal and based on ethnic profiling.
Officials from both India and Bangladesh confirm the expulsions. New Delhi claims the people deported are undocumented migrants particularly those from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh — with top officials referring to them as “termites” and “infiltrators”.
The expulsions have also sparked fear among India’s Muslim population, especially among speakers of Bengali, a widely spoken language in both eastern India and Bangladesh.
“Muslims, particularly from the eastern part of the country, are terrified,” said veteran Indian rights activist Harsh Mander. “You have thrown millions into this existential fear.”
Rahima Begum, from India’s eastern Assam state, described her ordeal, saying, “I have lived all my life here — my parents, my grandparents, they are all from here”. “I don’t know why they would do this to me.” She and five others, all Muslims, were detained by Indian police, forced into swampland near the Bangladesh border, and warned not to walk or they would be shot. Bangladeshi locals who found the group then handed them to border police.
Rights activists and lawyers criticised India’s drive as “lawless”. “You cannot deport people unless there is a country to accept them,” said New Delhi-based civil rights lawyer Sanjay Hegde. Indian law does not allow for people to be deported without due process, he added.
Bangladesh has said India has pushed more than 1,600 people across its border since May. Indian media suggests the number could be as high as 2,500. The Bangladesh Border Guards said it has sent back 100 of those pushed across — because they were Indian citizens.
India has been forcibly deporting Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, with navy ships dropping them off the coast of the war-torn nation.
Many of those targeted in the campaign are low-wage labourers in states governed by Modi’s BJP, according to rights activists.
“People of Muslim identity who happen to be Bengali speaking are being targeted as part of an ideological hate campaign,” said Mander, the activist.
Nazimuddin Mondal, a mason from West Bengal, said he was picked up by police in Mumbai, flown on a military aircraft to the border state of Tripura and pushed into Bangladesh.
He managed to cross back, and is now back in West Bengal, where he said he was born. “The Indian forces beat us with batons when we insisted we were Indians,” said Mondal, adding that despite showing government-issued ID, they refused to listen
