India has deported hundreds of people to Bangladesh without trial, according to officials from both countries, drawing condemnation from activists and lawyers who say the expulsions are illegal and based on ethnic profiling.
New Delhi claims the deported individuals are undocumented migrants.
However, according to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Bangla-speaking Indian citizens from BJP-ruled states were also labelled as "Bangladeshis" and deported despite having proof of citizenship, The Daily Star reported.
Rohingya refugees registered with the UNHCR were not spared either.
“Instead of following due legal procedure, India is pushing mainly Muslims and low-income communities from their own country to Bangladesh without any consent,” Taskin Fahmina, senior researcher at the Bangladesh human rights organisation Odhikar, told The Guardian.
“This push by India is against national and international law.”
The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hardline stance on immigration, particularly those from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, with top officials referring to them as "termites" and "infiltrators".
It has also sparked fear among India’s estimated 200 million Muslims, especially Bengali speakers — a language widely spoken in both eastern India and Bangladesh.
"Muslims, particularly from the eastern part of the country, are terrified," said veteran Indian rights activist Harsh Mander.
"Millions are thrown into this existential fear."
Bangladesh, largely encircled by land by India, has seen relations with New Delhi turn icy since a mass uprising in 2024 toppled Dhaka's government, a former friend of India.
But India also ramped up operations against “migrants” after a wider security crackdown in the wake of an attack in the west - the April 22 killing of 26 people, in Indian-administered Kashmir.
New Delhi blamed that attack on Pakistan, claims Islamabad rejected, with arguments culminating in a four-day conflict that left more than 70 dead.
Indian authorities launched an unprecedented countrywide security drive that has seen many thousands detained, many of whom were eventually pushed across the border to Bangladesh at gunpoint—an act that human rights groups labelled as illegal.
'Do not dare'
Rahima Begum, from India's eastern Assam state, said police detained her for several days in late May before taking her to the Bangladesh frontier.
She said she and her family had spent their life in India.
"I have lived all my life here - my parents, my grandparents, they are all from here," she said. "I don't know why they would do this to me."
Indian police took Begum, along with five other people, all Muslims, and forced them into swampland in the dark.
"They showed us a village in the distance and told us to crawl there," she said.
"They said: 'Do not dare to stand and walk, or we will shoot you.'"
Bangladeshi locals who found the group and were then handed them to border police, who ordered them to return to India, Begum said.
A week she was dropped back home in Assam with a warning to keep quiet.
'Ideological hate campaign'
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 is also 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 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to rights activists.
Indian authorities did not respond to questions about the number of people detained and deported.
But Assam state's chief minister has said that more than 300 people have been deported to Bangladesh.
Separately, Gujarat's police chief said more than 6,500 people have been rounded up in the western state, home to both Modi and interior minister Amit Shah.
Many of those were reported to be Bengali-speaking Indians and were later released.
"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 35-year-old mason, said he was picked up by police in the financial hub of 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 India's West Bengal state, where he said he was born.
"The Indian security forces beat us with batons when we insisted we were Indians," said Mondal, adding he is now scared to even go out to seek work.
"I showed them my government-issued ID, but they just would not listen."
 
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Source: TRT