Human Rights Watch slams arbitrary expulsions of Bengali Muslims with Indian citizenship
In a report released yesterday, the human rights group accuses India of expelling 1,500 Muslims to Bangladesh between May and June without due process, fuelling religious and ethnic discrimination. Those expelled include Indian citizens with valid papers, as several witnesses testified. In Assam, where the situation is most critical, evictions and home demolitions have been ongoing for months, involving thousands of families, expelled or detained, partly to make way for business development.
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused India of expelling hundreds of Bengali Muslims to Bangladesh without due process to determine their legal right to be in the country. For the human rights organisation, in doing so, India is nurturing religious prejudice against Muslims.
According to Bangladeshi authorities, India deported more than 1,500 Muslim men, women, and children to Bangladesh between 7 May and 15 June alone.
Elaine Pearson, HRW's Asia director, said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ultranationalist Hindu party, is "fueling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengali Muslims from the country, including Indian citizens.”
India’s claims that the expulsions are aimed at illegal immigration are “unconvincing,” according to HRW.
Khairul Islam, 51, a former teacher from Assam, told the human rights organisation that on 26 May, Indian border officials tied his hands, gagged him, and forced him to cross into Bangladesh, along with 14 other people.
“The BSF officer beat me when I refused to cross the border into Bangladesh and fired rubber bullets four times in the air,” said the man, who managed to return to India two weeks later by proving his Indian citizenship.
These expulsions are part of a nationwide campaign against suspected foreigners.
In May, India’s Home Ministry issued a directive calling on states and Union territories to identify, detain in designated centres established at the district level, and then expel undocumented immigrants, setting a 30-day deadline for verifying papers and initiating deportation proceedings.
In recent days, the Indian press has focused on the human rights violations occurring in Gurugram, in the State of Haryana.
On 19 July, police arrested and transferred to a detention centre at least 74 migrant workers, 11 from West Bengal and 63 from Assam, suspected of being undocumented foreigners from Bangladesh, mostly cleaners, rag pickers, sanitation workers, and delivery agents.
One of them, Hafizur Sheikh, from West Bengal, was detained despite having an Aadhaar card and a voter ID card. But the documents were on his phone, and the police demanded a physical copy.
Some activists claim that these centres can house over 200 people. Some of those arrested have reported torture and accused the police of asking for money to be let go.
Some women have reported that their husbands were taken without properly checking their identity papers.
Responding to the criticism, Gurugram Police PRO Sandeep Kumar said that, “They are not detained. As per the guidelines of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), certain holding centres have been created, and suspected Bangladeshis are being kept there. All basic necessities, including medical facilities, are being provided to them at the centres.”
Kumar, however, did not say how many people are being held.
The situation has prompted many families to relocate or prepare to leave Assam once their relatives are released.
The situation in Assam is further exacerbated by a series of demolitions. In recent months, local authorities have razed homes, schools, and medical centres in the districts of Dhubri, Lakhimpur, Nalbari, and Goalpara.
According to estimates, approximately 3,500 Muslim families were displaced between June and July 2025 alone.
While the evictions are justified by saying that the buildings were built on government lands and grazing/forest reserves, the Adani Group, owned by billionaire entrepreneur close to Prime Minister Modi, has proposed to build a 3,000-megawatt thermal power plant in the area.
The issue is also linked to the work of various government bodies, such as the National Register of Citizens, established to separate Indian-born Bengalis from Bangladeshi citizens, who have been crossing the border for decades as economic migrants as well as refugees.
The burden of proof of Indian citizenship (determined by having at least one relative born in Assam before midnight on 24 March 1971, before Bangladesh gained independence) falls entirely on the individual, complicating the identification process.
After India's Supreme Court ordered a review of the registry in 2013, a final list was published in 2019, excluding 1.9 million people out of over 33 million applicants.
These people, mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims from low-income families, found themselves in legal limbo.
This is also why Assam has foreigners tribunals, a unique institution in the state, responsible for determining citizenship. Numerous reports, however, denounce arbitrariness and bias in these bodies.
Assam's Chief Minister and BJP member Himanta Biswa Sarma recently expressed his intention to reduce the reliance on foreigners tribunals for deportations by using laws dating back to 1950 that would allow immediate expulsion.
This has elicited strong opposition and blunt criticism. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee strongly condemned the recent actions by the BJP, accusing the party of “linguistic terror” against Bengalis, who are often singled out for not speaking Hindi.
Bengali is the second most spoken language in Assam as well as in India as a whole.
Banerjee led a large demonstration in Kolkata on 16 July, challenging the BJP to detain her.
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17/07/2018 15:41
01/08/2018 15:23
