‘Targeted assault': Bengali migrant workers in BJP-ruled states asked to prove they are Indians

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14-07-2025

On the morning of June 30, the Odisha police landed up at the home of Ismail Sheikh, a 34-year-old mason from Bengal's Murshidabad district.
Sheikh had arrived in Odisha three days ago to work at a building construction site in Jagatsinghpur district, and was living with four other workers from Murshidabad.
'The police asked us where we were from and what our religion was,' Sheikh recounted to Scroll. 'I told them that we are from Murshidabad and we are Muslims.'
The police officials then asked Sheikh to visit the Balikuda police station and submit his and his roommates' Aadhaar cards. He complied.
The next day, the five workers from Bengal were summoned to the police station again. They went with their documents but were asked to go to the Paradeep police station, 65 km away, to verify their documents. 'They said we will be taken in a bus and brought back the same way. We agreed,' he said.
At Paradeep police station, however, their photographs were taken and they were taken to a camp 2 km away. Sheikh saw that other Bengali Muslim workers in Balikuda had also been summoned to the camp. 'We were 36 people in all,' Sheikh said.
It was at the camp that Sheikh realised why they had been called there. 'One official from the Jagatsinghpur district administration came to the camp and said: 'You all are Bangladeshi. You are speaking Bengali means you are Bangladeshi',' Sheikh said. 'He threatened to take us to the border and hand us to the BSF [Border Security Force].'
Sheikh recounted the official saying: 'Don't talk too much, or we will send you to Bangladesh.'
Sheikh and 35 other workers spent six days at the camp. They were released on the morning of July 5 after the intervention of the West Bengal government.
Others were not as lucky. On June 20, two families were picked up by the Delhi Police from a slum in Rohini – 29-year-old scrap dealer Danish, his wife and son, and 33-year-old Sweety Bibi and her two minor sons.
Six days later, they were 'pushed' into Bangladesh, according to a police statement. The police refused to accept that that they belonged to Birbhum district in West Bengal.
'She called us from Bangladesh, weeping and crying for help,' Lajina Bibi, Sweety's 50-year-old mother, told Scroll.
Danish's other child, seven-year-old Anisa Khan, has been left behind in Delhi. She was hiding with her grandmother Josnra Bibi during the police raid.
When Scroll met Josnra, she insisted that they were Indians, pulling out documents from a plastic carry bag to make her case. She said she last heard from her daughter and son-in-law when someone called from Bangladesh offering to help them cross the border and return to India in exchange for Rs 35,000. 'But I don't have the money.'
Trinamool Congress's Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam, too, vouched for the families. 'They are from my home district Birbhum and live 40 km from my home. They are Indians.'
Islam has helped the families file habeas corpus petitions in the Calcutta High Court.
These are not isolated instances.
Over the last two months, Bengali-speaking migrant workers like Sheikh and Danish have been rounded up by the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked to prove that they are Indian citizens and not Bangladeshis. Most of those being detained are Muslims.
In Gujarat, days after the Pahalgam terror attack, hundreds of Bengali migrant workers were paraded on the streets of Ahmedabad and rounded up as a part of a drive to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
In Mumbai, too, Muslim families from West Bengal were forced out of India and taken to Bangladesh, without being given adequate time to prove that they are Indians. They were brought back once the West Bengal government raised the issue.
23 workers from Mirzapur village Panighata GP in my constituency are being illegally detailed with 421 other Bengali workers at interrogation centre by Orient Police Station in Jharsuguda, Odisha despite full documentation @DGPOdisha @SecyChief @Naveen_Odisha pic.twitter.com/nlvmW6Zfoc
— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) July 9, 2025
'A targeted assault'
On July 7, when Sheikh spoke to Scroll, he said he was returning home to Bengal, even though he had not been paid for his work and his bike was still in Odisha. 'If we don't have security, we will not come [back],' he said.
Three days after Sheikh was released, the police in Odisha's Jharsuguda district rounded up 444 'suspected foreign nationals', who were then taken to a centre to verify their documents. 'We are doing this verification under the Foreigners' Act and guidelines from the home ministry,' a senior police official in Jharsuguda told Scroll.
However, migrant workers representatives from Bengal denied that the detained people were foreigners. 'All are from Malda, Birbhum, Murshidabad and other districts,' Mohammad Ripon Sheikh, who heads the migrant labourer organisation, Parijayee Shramik Aikya Mancha, told Scroll.
'They are being detained even if they have no police records,' Samirul Islam, who is also the chairman of the state's Migrant Welfare Board, told Scroll. 'The police officers of the BJP-ruled states are detaining migrant workers for over 24 hours, without producing them before the court. Which law allows them to do so?'
On July 3, Bengal chief secretary Manoj Pant wrote to his Odisha counterpart, flagging instances of Bengali-speaking migrant workers being detained without 'due process' in regions around Paradip and across coastal districts of Odisha. 'It is deeply distressing to learn that many of them are being targeted solely because they speak Bengali, their mother tongue, and are being unjustly labeled as Bangladeshi infiltrators,' Pant said.
A migrant workers' platform from Malda estimates that over 120 Bengali workers have returned to the Bengal district 'in fear, abandoning their jobs and livelihoods'.
Mohammad Rafik Ahmed, coordinator of the Malda Sromik Pokkho, told Scroll: ' After the tragic Pahalgam attack, we have received over 170 distress calls from workers in Rajasthan, Odisha, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and other states. More than 500 Bengali workers have been assaulted, evicted, or threatened. At least 300 have been detained – many without any legal basis, particularly in Odisha and Rajasthan.'
He added: 'This is not merely a law-and-order issue, it is a targeted assault on the identity, livelihood, and dignity of Bengali workers.'
'Pushed into Bangladesh'
Bangali Basti is a settlement of Bengali migrants in Delhi's Rohini. In the last month or so, the residents of the slum told Scroll, the police had carried out several raids to 'identify illegal immigrants'.
In one such drive on June 20, the police picked up Danish, his wife Sunali Khatun and five-year-old son.
According to two police statements seen by Scroll, the three were held in a detention centre in Rohini's Vijay Vihar. On June 23, they were produced at the Foreigners' Regional Registration Office in Delhi. Another family was detained along with them – 33-year-old Sweety Bibi and her two minor sons, one of whom is five years old.
A deportation order against all six was issued by the FRRO office the same day. Scroll has seen the order.
According to the police, they were tipped off by an informer, who identified Danish as 'a Bangladeshi national'. The police also claimed that Danish had 'confessed' to being a Bangladeshi citizen.
On June 26, they were 'pushed' into Bangladesh, according to a statement of the station house officer of KN Katju Marg police station in Delhi's Rohini district and an order of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office in Delhi. Scroll has seen the police statement and the FRRO order.
Sweety's 50-year-old mother Lajina, who also lives in Delhi, said they had shown their Aadhaar and voter cards to the police but those were not accepted. She claimed that Sweety Bibi, like Sunali, was from Paikar village in Bengal's Birbhum district.
A relative of Danish, Roshini, confirmed to Scroll that he was in Bangladesh. 'We submitted our documents and Aadhaar cards to the police in Rohini but they threw them away, saying you are Bangladeshi and we will send you to Bangladesh,' she said.
Roshini claimed that they had submitted land documents and voter cards of their family members. 'Even the police from Birbhum district talked with Rohini police but they were not released,' she said.
When Scroll visited the Rohini slum on July 10, it wore a deserted look. Most residents had made their way back to their native villages in West Bengal.
Danish's mother-in-law Josnra Bibi had not left. Following her around was Anisa Khatun, his seven-year-old daughter. During the police raid on June 20, Josnra Bibi said she had hid in another hut with Anisa.
Josnra Bibi alleged that everyone in the slum is 'terrified' .'The police treat us like stray dogs,' she said. 'They came to our hut and said, 'Why are you Bangladeshis not leaving this place?' They say that Bengali-speaking means Bangladeshi. But only Muslims are being picked up.'
Sandeep Gupta, Rohini's additional deputy commissioner of police, denied allegations of harassment. 'We act as per law,' he told Scroll. 'If anyone has any grievance related to any such matter, they can send a representation to us.'
Bhodu Sheikh, Sunali Khatun's father, and Amir Khan, the elder brother of Sweety Bibi, have filed separate habeas corpus petitions before the Calcutta High Court.
On Friday, the court sought a report from the Union home ministry by July 16 on the deportation of Danish, Sunali, Sweety and their three children.
In June, seven migrant workers from Bengal were similarly picked up by the Mumbai police, who refused to believe they were Indian citizens. They were then flown to Bengal and forced across the border into Bangladesh.
Fajer Mandal, a 21-year-old mason from North 24 Parganas who was picked up with his wife, told Scroll that he submitted a bunch of documents to the police, from his 'polio vaccination card to his Aadhaar card and land documents from Bengal'. 'They said these were duplicates, that I had paid for them. They said I am a Bangladeshi and I don't have anyone here in India,' he said.
The case of Mehboob Sheikh from Murshidabad district was no less striking. The police pushed him out in four days despite intervention from the Bengal police, the state migrant welfare board and submission of necessary documents to prove his Indian citizenship.
All seven were later brought back from Bangladesh with the help of the Bengal police, Samirul Islam, chief of the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board, told Scroll.
'They are asking for birth certificates'
West Bengal's leaders and officials have also flagged the fact that the police in these states have been insisting on documentary proof that is hard to access for people from rural areas. 'They are refusing to accept genuine Aadhar cards, voter cards and ration cards as identity proofs,' Samirul Islam, the Rajya Sabha MP, told Scroll. 'The authorities are not even contacting the state government to verify their citizenship.'
Family members of workers held in Odisha's Jharsuguda district told Scroll that the police had asked for birth certificates in order to release them.
Liptan Sheikh, a 40-year-old mason from Birbhum district, is being held in a camp in Odisha's Jharsuguda district on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi.
His nephew Moijuddin Sheikh said the police have detained him for over four days, and insist on a birth certificate to prove he is not an illegal immigrant. 'But he does not have a birth certificate. We have submitted his school certificate, voter ID card and Aadhar card. But they have not accepted any of these.'
The senior police official from Jharsuguda told Scroll on Friday that the 'primary' documents to ascertain the nationality of the migrant workers are birth certificates and passports. 'The supporting documents include Aadhaar, voter cards and land records. When they are able to produce those, we are letting them go,' the official said. 'This is not detention, but verification.'
Several migrant workers released from detention told The Indian Express and The Hindu that their phones were checked to see if they had any contacts in Bangladesh.
In his letter to the Odisha government, Bengal chief secretary Pant pointed out that 'in many instances, the [detained migrant workers] are being asked to produce ancestral land records dating back several generations, an unreasonable and unjustifiable demand for migrant workers.'
Attacks in Odisha
While Bengali-speaking migrant workers from Bengal and Assam have been targeted in the past as 'Bangladeshis' in Delhi and Mumbai, many have been taken aback by the hostility they have faced in the last 12 months in Odisha.
'There was peace when Naveen Patnaik was the chief minister,' said Sabirul Sheikh, a 36-year-old mason from Murshidabad, who was detained at the camp in Jagatsinghpur district with Ismail Sheikh. 'The harassment started after the BJP came to power last year,' said Sheikh, who has worked in Odisha for 16 years.
The Pahalgam terror attack in Kashmir, where 25 tourists were killed after being singled out for their religion, triggered a wave of hostility and attacks against Bengali workers in Odisha, several workers said.
A day after the attack, a group of 40 construction workers from Malda were attacked in Sambhalpur, Odisha. They had been hired last year by a private firm to build a flyover at Ainthapali Chowk in Sambalpur.
Rafikul Islam, one of the workers who faced the violence, said a group of men allegedly belonging to the Bajrang Dal came to their work site and asked whether they were Bengalis. 'When we said yes, they attacked and beat up us,' he told Scroll.
Two days later, 56-year-old Alkesh Sheikh was peddling his wares on the streets of Dhenkanal district in Odisha on his two-wheeler when he was attacked by a father-son duo. The video of the violence became viral.
Alkesh Sheikh, who is from Madhupur village in Murshidabad, has been selling plastic goods, kitchen utensils, clothes, in Odisha for the last six years. 'They came up to me and asked me where I am from. As soon as I said that I am from Murshidabad, they started to beat me and asked me to leave.'
He left the state soon after.
This round of attacks led to an exodus of Bengali workers from Odisha. On May 2, Trinamool Congress MP Yusuf Pathan in a letter to Union home minister Amit Shah said that workers from his Baharampur constituency, faced 'targeted attacks' as they were 'robbed', 'looted' and intimidated to vacate their accommodations and workplaces. According to the MP, approximately 20,000 workers fled Odisha in the following days.
Alkesh Sheikh blamed the attacks on Bengalis in Orissa on misinformation and rumour-mongering about communal violence in Bengal following the protests against the new Waqf bill.
'There were rumours in Orissa that Hindus in Murshidabad are being slaughtered,' Sheikh said. 'This contributed to attacks on Bengali Muslims in Orissa.' On April 11 and April 12, protests against the Modi government's Waqf Amendment Act turned violent in parts of Murshidabad district. Three people d ied in the violence.
Difficult choice
The detentions and attacks pose difficult choices for the out-migrants from West Bengal.
Many workers from Odisha said they were worried that the police had not assured them of any protection. 'We spent five days in police custody even after submitting the documents. And even after releasing us, the police did not say that nothing will happen to us,' said Sabirul Sheikh.
Seven workers he had taken to Balikuda have returned because they 'fear being arrested.'
Not all can afford to return home. Imdadul Sheikh, a 44-year-old mason-cum-contractor who was detained for five days with Sabirul, said he cannot leave without being paid Rs 4 lakh he is due. 'I know it is unsafe here but we are poor people and this is a huge amount of money for me.'
Josnra Bibi, who is distraught at the thought of her daughter in Bangladesh, rejects any suggestion that she should leave the Delhi slum and go back to Birbhum. 'How will we earn our living in the village?' she said. 'We are not begging or stealing here. We were working hard to make ends meet.'