On July 25, The Hindu reported that Human Rights Watch had documented expulsions being carried out without any verification of citizenship. Bangladesh’s own border guards confirmed that more than 1,500 people had been pushed out in just five weeks. The report of Deutsche Welle amplified these findings with testimonies of workers whose Aadhaar cards were torn up, who were beaten, and then forced across the border at gunpoint.

Article 14 described the atmosphere in Ahmedabad’s Chandola area, where residents say their neighbours vanish overnight. As one woman put it: “They’re taken, and we don’t even get to see them again.”

The Courts: Cautious but engaged

For weeks, the deportations took place largely outside the gaze of the judiciary. That shifted in August.

On August 14, LiveLaw reported that the Supreme Court had issued notice to the Union government and nine states on a petition filed by the West Bengal Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board. The Board alleged that under a May directive of the Ministry of Home Affairs, arbitrary deportations were being carried out by multiple state police forces, targeting Bengali-speaking workers.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi pressed the Centre to respond. While the Solicitor General denied any targeting based on language, the Court reminded him that “action cannot be on the basis of language.” The bench stopped short of granting interim relief, but hinted at the need for a central coordination mechanism.

Meanwhile, the Calcutta High Court has taken a more pointed approach. On July 17, Scroll reported that the Court had sought answers about the case of Sunali Bibi, allegedly deported from Delhi while eight months pregnant. The petition was filed by her family, who say she was detained in Delhi despite showing Aadhaar and other documents.

According to the report of Madhyamam, it was revealed that the Delhi FRRO had issued an order on June 24 and executed it two days later. Delhi Police maintained that due process was followed. The Calcutta High Court, however, has asked the Union to explain why deportations suddenly escalated in June. The case is listed for hearing on August 20.

States push ahead

Even as courts are probing these deportations, state governments are moving aggressively.

• Maharashtra: On August 8, the Indian Express reported that Mumbai Police deported 112 people in a single operation using an Indian Air Force aircraft to the Assam–Bangladesh border. This brought the 2025 tally in Mumbai to 719 deportations — a staggering jump from 152 in all of 2024. Officials said they relied on call records, bank transactions, and site visits to identify foreigners. But the same report showed troubling patterns: entire families being targeted, and mothers with minor children deported without clarity about the children’s citizenship.
• Tamil Nadu: On August 12, the New Indian Express reported that the Attur district jail in Salem has been designated as a special camp for nearly 200 Bangladeshi nationals awaiting deportation. With existing camps overcrowded, Tamil Nadu’s move reflects how states are formalising and expanding detention infrastructure for cross-border removals.
• West Bengal: By contrast, West Bengal is resisting. On June 17, The Telegraph reported that three of five workers who had been pushed into Bangladesh were repatriated after the state government pressed the BSF to raise the matter with its Bangladeshi counterparts. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has publicly accused BJP-ruled states of using deportations to harass Bengali-speaking Indians. On July 19, The Hindu reported her charge that this is part of a political campaign. That same day, The Hindu carried the testimony of Sweety Bibi, who said she and her family were picked up in Delhi’s Rohini area and deported despite holding Aadhaar cards.

Anatomy of a “push-out”

What distinguishes these deportations is their method. Reports by Citizens for Justice and Peace have previously detailed how people are detained in distant cities, transported under guard to Assam, and then forced across informal stretches of the border by the BSF — sometimes through river channels. There are no FIRs, no magistrates, and no tribunal hearings. Families are often not informed, and the individuals vanish from Indian legal records.

As The Indian Express explained, the Foreigners Act, 1946, places the burden on individuals to prove citizenship, but it still mandates a legal process — notice, inquiry, and tribunal adjudication. Many have argued that skipping these steps transforms deportations into unlawful expulsions.

The human cost

Behind the legal arguments are human tragedies. Deutsche Welle carried accounts of men in Mumbai who were beaten, stripped of their IDs, and loaded onto buses for Assam. In Delhi, the case of Sunali Bibi raises urgent questions about the rights of her unborn child if she gives birth in Bangladesh.

In Ahmedabad, Article 14 reported that residents of Chandola — branded as “Bangladeshis” after a demolition drive — have been cut off from rentals, water supply, and even schools for their children. Fear of deportation now pervades everyday life.

The emotional fallout can be as devastating as the legal consequences. In a deeply tragic case documented by India Today, The Indian Express, NDTV, and The Telegraph, a 63-year-old Kolkata man named Dilip Kumar Saha—who had lived in the city since 1972 after migrating from Dhaka—died by suicide amid intense fear over being targeted by the proposed NRC. His family said that even though he possessed valid voter ID and other documentation, he was increasingly anxious about the possibility of being detained or “pushed out” to Bangladesh. No explicit mention of NRC appeared in his note, but his wife and local politicians blamed the atmosphere of uncertainty for driving him to depression

The bottom line

India is in the middle of a deportation surge unlike anything seen in decades. State governments like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are expanding infrastructure and accelerating deportations; West Bengal is contesting them and even securing the return of deported workers. The Supreme Court and High Courts are beginning to engage but have yet to halt the practice.

As documented across multiple media reports as well as the ground reports of CJP, what unites these cases is a disturbing absence of due process. Citizens and migrants alike are being swept up, disappeared across the border, and left to fight for recognition.

The months ahead will show whether India’s judiciary reasserts constitutional safeguards — or whether the “push-out” becomes an entrenched, silent feature of governance at the border.

Related:

India’s New Immigration Order 2025: Consolidation or continuity of exclusion?

Banasha Bibi, Bengali-speaking Muslim woman with disability, declared Indian in CJP-Led Legal Win

Assam’s Citizenship Crisis: How Foreigners Tribunals construct an architecture of exclusion and rights violations

“She Can’t Just Disappear”: Gauhati High Court told as state fails to produce handover certificate in Doyjan Bibi “pushback” case

The post India’s Silent Push-Out: Courts, states, and the deportation of Bengali-Speaking Muslims appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The news of the informal ban was also confirmed by internal email communications among apartment residents in Kadubeesanahalli, Koramangala, HSR Layout, Somasundara Palya, Panathur, Sarjapur Road, Kundalahalli and Tubarahalli limits of Bengaluru to which Deccan Herald had gotten access to. Reportedly, it was a response to the police crackdown on illegal migrants which set off this panic amongst apartments in Bengaluru. Many residents were clueless about whether this ban will be implemented.

Activists and civil society groups in Bengaluru have responded saying that only daily wage workers and lower income groups get affected at such moments. Earlier they had to deal with law enforcement agencies; now, since, the panic has set in, they are at a risk of losing their livelihoods, the reason that drove them to migrate from their home states.

It, however, seems unlikely that this informal ban can only be attributed to the panic set in due to police crackdown on illegal immigrants. The drive by political forces who govern the state has fed into this agenda. The BJP-ruled government is already building adetention campin the outskirts of Bengaluru.

Such a ban cannot have a legal backing and hence it is being carried out informally through an  exchange of emails and by communicating to hiring agencies that they do not want to hire Bengali speaking people.

A detailed investigation

A detailed investigation was carried out by The Federal which highlighted that in the clusters in Thubarahalli village located in East Bengaluru, there was a virtual ‘India-Bangladesh’ border due to the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who live there. The Indian Bengalis live in constant fear that due to the illegal immigrants they also will be apprehended despite of being rightful citizens of the country. As per this report, the detention centre near Bengaluru is weeks away from its opening, making Karnataka the second state to have such a facility. Clearly this is in pursuance to the larger agenda of the Central ruling party since in July, Union Home Minister had said, “We want to stop infiltration and also push every single infiltrator out of the country. As far as Hindu refugees are concerned, we are bringing the Citizenship Amendment Bill to give them Indian citizenship.”

Per the report, many false cases were lodged against the Bengali Speaking Muslim labourers in Bengaluru implicating them as illegal immigrants but the same were quashed in courts, being false. There are Bengali Muslim settlements in Thubarahalli, Sarjapur, Bellandur, Hosur and other parts of the outskirts of Bengaluru which will, in all probability, face the dire consequences once the detention centre opens up in accordance with the state government’s mandate.

The investigation carried out by The Federal also revealed the miserable conditions in which Bengali speaking migrants from other states in India, suffer at the hands of contractors of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). It was noticed that many Bengali speaking migrants work with these contractors as garbage pickers and while their work lacks any dignity, they are also not paid by the contractors and they earn their living by selling scrap material, segregated from the garbage picked by them with their bare hands. There have been instances where these workers have raised their voices against such corrupt contractors who take money from BBMP and do not pay these workers their due; but in response the contractor hired new workers, rendering the protesting workers jobless.

The interesting point is that these contractors have links with labour agents who traffic Bangladeshi labourers by bribing sentries in both countries and these immigrants who are in dire need of work, are economically abused at the hands of the contractors and do these odd jobs to earn a meagre living.

Ripple effect

Karnataka is not the only state where the preparations for nationwide NRC have begun. Uttar Pradesh government also released a notice to the State police to identify illegal immigrants; even though the police claim that this exercise is not related to NRC, one can easily connect dots and infer that this is a groundwork for NRC.

Mumbai has also not been immune to this ripple effect and it was reported in early September that the State Government had sought a 3-acre plot in Navi Mumbai to set up a detention camp. The ‘2019 Model Detention Manual’ which was released by the Central government states that every city or district which has a major immigration check post must have a detention centre.

While illegal immigration may be an offencethat needs to be dealt with in accordance with the law of the land, haphazard implementation of the Foreigner’s Act in the rest of the country, while no proper mechanism is yet in place even in Assam, can prove to be extremely dangerous and augments fears of an impending humanitarian crisis throughout the crisis.

Panic has set in, in one city, which has emerged as a major commercial hub of India and if the trend catches and panic sets in, many innocent Bengali speaking low income groups who have migrated to such cities to earn their bread and to make two ends meet will be left hapless and will be faced with a kind of crisis that will remain unresolved for a long time. A living example of the NRC crisis in Assam has not escaped anyone’s attention. Owing to the lack of a proper system of implementation in place, Assam is already suffering a grave humanitarian crisis and the danger looms over the rest of the country now.
 
Related articles:
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NRC: Fear and dismay at ‘India-Bangladesh border’ in Bengaluru
B’luru migrant Bengali labourers convert garbage to ‘gold’, get paid nothing
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The post Bengali speaking workers face likely ban in Bengaluru apartments, what’s next? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: The Hindu

Slamming the Centre over the killings of five Bengal labourers in Kashmir’s Kulgam area on Tuesday, West Bengal Chief Minister said, “Presently there are no political activities in Kashmir and entire law and order is with the Government of India”, The Telegraph reported.

Banerjee expressed her rage through a tweet.

In the wake of the incident that took the life of the five men from Murshidabad, Mamata said that her party MPs and MLAs had reached the victims’ homes to meet the families, while also assuring a compensation of INR 5 lakh to all the families.

Alluding to the detention of political leaders when she stated there were no political activities in the state, she added that the incident had left her shocked and deeply saddened. She also demanded a “strong investigation so that the real truth comes out”. “We are deputing Shri Sanjay Singh ADG South Bengal to find out details from them.”

This is not the first attack on migrant labourers in Jammu and Kashmir. Since the abrogation of Article 370, militants have killed at least five people from outside the state have been brutally killed or injured.

Leader of the Congress in the LokSabha and Behrampore MP Adhir Chowdhury also blamed the Centre. “Since August 5, the day the Centre got the bill passed in Parliament to abolish the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the safety and security of the people was its responsibility. Such brutal killings highlight the real picture Kashmir that the Modi government is desperately trying to hide from the rest of the world. Nobody but the BJP government should be blamed for this,” Chowdhury said.

Jangipur MP KhalilurRahaman, who visited the families of the victims along with Trinamul district president and Murshidabad MP Abu Taher Khan and state minister Jakir Hossain and local MLA SubrataSaha said, “Such unfortunate incidents only prove how miserably the BJP government at the Centre has failed to provide security to the Kashmiris, too. If the condition is so bad that non-Kashmiris are brutally killed, everybody can imagine the helplessness of the people of the Valley.”

Just a day before this incident, terrorists had attacked a truck driver in Anantnag district and targeted people waiting at a bus stand in Sopore. The afternoon that the labourers were killed, the state saw terrorists firing indiscriminately at paramilitary personnel deployed at a school in Pulwama district.

Incidents against civilians have been on the rise since the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5 this year. Yet, the Modi government insists on portraying that ‘all is well’ in the Valley. Two days ago, the Prime Minister took a bunch of European Parliamentarians for an ‘inspection’ tour to show them the ground reality of Kashmir, even when it has Indian leaders still under house-arrest and it is not saying anything with regards to the US Congressional hearingabout human right violations in the Valley after the revocation of J&K’s special status.

And then, in a usual blatant denial about the deaths of the five labourers being the inaccuracy of the Centre, Bengal BJP chief and Midnapore MP Dilip Ghosh blamed the Mamata government for the deaths by highlighting how joblessness in Bengal was pushing youths to migrate to “difficult areas like Kashmir that border Pakistan”.

“The Trinamul government should first create jobs for youths in the state so that they are not forced to migrate,” Ghosh said.

Related:
‘No outsiders in Kashmir’: Militants target non-locals, gun down apple traders and migrant labourers
Misrepresent “facts” a la BJP’s ideological Imperative: Mission Kashmir
Seeking external validation? Modi invites EU lawmakers to visit ‘normal’ Kashmir
Kashmir & Assam rights issues at US Congressional hearing: Oct 2019
 

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