Belongings at the staff quarters at Vikas Bhatta, a brick kiln in Jhajjar, Haryana, from where six Bengali-speaking migrant workers were detained by the Delhi police on June 25.
| Photo Credit:
SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
Bharat Karmakar is jolted when oil droplets from an overheated kadhai hit his arms on a sultry June afternoon. Having absent-mindedly dropped a chunky fish head into the wok, Karmakar, instead of stirring, had carelessly held on to the khunti (spoon for deep-frying, in Bengali), while staring at the speeding vans of the Delhi police.
For the 50-year-old, who has been single-handedly managing a Bengali eatery on the Delhi-Haryana border, seeing the police vans was not new. However, in the past few months, the connotations have changed. “The Delhi police would often enter this part of the highway to patrol or follow illicit liquor traders, but now they are looking for Bengali-speaking labourers who work in brick kilns,” he says.
The road in front of Karmakar’s shop leads to Haryana and ends on the Rajasthan border, with both sides of the road dotted with brick kilns. He says in the 37 years he has been running the eatery, this is the first time that there is vigilance on Bengali-speaking people. Police in plain clothes have come by in the past few months asking about the number of Bengali–speaking people coming to the shop and if he ever suspected that they were Bangladeshis from their accents.
“In this part of the world, only people from West Bengal and Bihar come in search of maach-bhaat (fish-rice). Following their trail, the police come to ask questions,” he says, while stirring the kadhai full of macher matha diye chorchori.
The police arrive
On the same day, about 15 km from his shop, six Bengali-speaking persons from West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district were detained by the Delhi police on suspicion of being illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. While one of them was released two days later, the remaining five were released six days later following the intervention of the West Bengal government.
The persons who were detained say they hail from Dinhata in Cooch Behar and were employed as daily wage workers for 10 years in the National Capital Region (NCR). They claim that they used to reside in one of the 111 Indian enclaves located deep inside Bangladesh that were exchanged with 51 Bangladeshi enclaves in India as per the Land Boundary Agreement signed between the two countries in 2015. Following the agreement, they decided to move to Dinhata.
They say people living in the enclaves in India were given the choice of moving to Bangladesh or staying put and becoming Indian citizens. The Delhi police had seen Bangladesh-related documents on the mobile phones of women and men from this part of India.
Around 4 p.m. on June 25, two vans of the Delhi police zoomed into Vikas Bhatta, a brick kiln in Jhajjar, Haryana, recalls Trilok Kumar, 50, the manager of the kiln. At least six police officers, some in uniform and others in plain clothes, stepped out and walked straight to the staff quarters, he says. “They did not stop to answer our questions about why they were here,” he adds.
Inside the cluster of bare-brick rooms, with a common kitchen and two bathrooms, the police officers looked around and asked for labourers who spoke Bengali, he recalls.
In the next few minutes, Shamshul Haque, Rizaul Haque, Rabiul Haque, Rashida Begum, Roman Haque, and Johurul Miyan were allegedly asked to produce their government IDs to prove that they were Indian citizens.
“We informed them that the verification of each of the workers had been done by the Bahadurgarh police (in Haryana). Yet, the officers of the Delhi police said the workers were lying and took them away in their vans,” says Trilok.
They were taken to the Shalimar Bagh police station in Delhi and detained on suspicion of being illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, he adds.
As Trilok and his supervisor, Ajay Kumar, paced up and down near the main gate of the bhatti (kiln), they received a call from the police station. “The SHO (station house officer) told me that the workers had all confessed that they were from Bangladesh and that they were to be deported the next day by flight. He said I must arrange to send their families to the chowki (police station) by 10 that night,” says Ajay.
Connecting families
Ajay dialled the sole number he had of one of the families of the detained persons in West Bengal. He got in touch with Sharmeen Khatun, Shamshul’s 19-year-old daughter, and told her that her father and uncle, along with their neighbours, had been picked up by the police. He reassured her that they had not committed any crime.
Sharmeen was not surprised by the development, but was scared about what would happen to her relatives. “I reached out to the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board and asked for help,” says Sharmeen, adding that barring the information Ajay had given her, she had no other details for close to 48 hours since the detainment. The West Bengal government had set up the board in 2023 to take care of the needs of migrant workers.
Ajay and Trilok booked a car and took the wife and minor son of one of the detainees to the police station. “We packed all their documents — Aadhaar cards, voter ID cards, land documents, and travel passes (issued by the Indian government to those who had changed their nationality in 2015) — to show the police that they were innocent,” says Trilok.
However, when they reached the police station at 8 p.m., the police allegedly took the documents and detained the woman and her child.
On June 27, Ajay recalls 52-year-old Johurul getting out of an autorickshaw in front of the iron gates of Vikas Bhatta. “He had bruises on his legs and hands, and they were swollen,” he says.
Johurul broke down and claimed that the police had thrashed him, says Ajay.
Johurul says the police used a belt-like patta made of coarse material to beat him up. “They took me aside in the same cell where all of us were kept. They began incessantly hitting the soles of my feet and then my arms, coercing me to say that I was a Bangladeshi, but I stuck to the truth,” he says.
He adds that the detainees were first kept in a lock-up at the police station and a day later taken to a detention centre near Azadpur Mandi, a wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Delhi. “At the detention camp, the men were kept separately from the women and children,” he says.
Action and reaction
Trinamool Congress MP Samirul Islam, who heads the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board, alleges that the migrants were harassed simply because they were “Bengali-speaking Muslims”. He claims that BJP-ruled States are hounding Bengali Muslims by branding them as Bangladeshis.
On July 4, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North West) Bhisham Singh said he was told by his subordinates that the six persons were picked up from a railway station in Delhi. The kiln in Haryana is outside the Delhi police’s jurisdiction. “They were detained just for a day for verification when they were trying to flee,” he said. “People who work in the brick kiln have been leaving the city ever since the monsoon hit the northern States,” he added.
This is standard practice as the kiln is shut through the rains. Singh said he was told that the six workers were from Bagerhat in Bangladesh.
On July 9, he admitted they were “illegally detained” and that people should not be kept in detention for more than 24 hours. “However, we never beat up anyone, even if it is proved that they are Bangladeshi nationals.”
He said the six had produced their Aadhaar cards, but the document is no longer considered a proof of Indian citizenship. “People must have a voter ID card to prove that they are from India.”
In the first term of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre (2014-2019), there was a push for Aadhaar cards. Many government facilities were inaccessible unless an Indian national possessed the document.
Singh said while all six detainees were released after their documents were verified, they “confessed” that they were originally from Bangladesh. He also said the police found call detail records and monetary transactions linked to mobile numbers in the neighbouring country.
Bengalis in Delhi
Rizaul confirms this. “They found Bangladeshi documents on our devices because five of us were Bangladeshi citizens till 2015. After the Land Boundary Agreement, it was left to us to choose which country’s citizenship we wanted,” he says.
The 42-year-old adds that while they tried telling the police the full story, the investigators did not want to listen.
He adds that the transactions were money transfers to his ageing parents, who live in the Phulbari subdivision of Bangladesh. Rizaul is one of the 922 people who registered their names for Indian citizenship in 2015.
“My brothers and I chose to become Indian citizens, while Ammi (mother) and Abbu (father) wished to take their last breath in our ancestral home in Bangladesh,” says Rizaul.
The family found a place in Dinhata, while several people settled in two other camps in the district: Haldibari and Mekhliganj.
In August 2024, sources say the Ministry of Home Affairs had ordered a nationwide crackdown on Bangladeshi nationals staying illegally in India. Bengali and Bangladeshi language, food, and dress habits are similar.
A senior official of the West Bengal government says on condition of anonymity that those who hail from the enclaves have been struggling more than other Bengalis. “The sight of an old Bangladeshi document has become proof enough for officials to harass and later deport people who possess them,” he says.
On July 2, Shamshul and the five others boarded a train back to their home town.
“In 2016, when I got this job offer, I gathered some of my neighbours and brothers from my village and set out for work in Delhi and Haryana. However, we have to leave now as we are being targeted for speaking Bengali and wearing lungis,” he says, unsure of their future.
Shamshul, who is a contractor, says they can make up to ₹300 a day in West Bengal, but there is no regular work. In the NCR, they can make up to ₹600 a day, with guaranteed work.
Rizaul agrees, saying they would not have put their safety at risk if there was work in their home State. “After the monsoon, despite the risks, I will consider going back. How else will I feed my wife and children?” he says.
The government official says almost all men in West Bengal’s villages work outside the State.
alisha.d@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
