Begum Saiba, a Bangladeshi Muslim woman from Thakurgaon district, and her husband were detained and jailed in India for illegally trespassing in the border zone. (ucanews photo)
Indian authorities have deported hundreds of alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, raising alarm along the border.
The Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has detained 329 people for illegally trespassing into Bangladesh from India in the past three weeks, local media reported.
Most were detained in two border zones in Jhenidah and Jessore districts of Bangladesh, which shares 4,156 kilometers of a land border with India and 18 crossings points.
Initially, the detainees were regarded as “infiltrators” but they have been found to be Bangladeshi citizens, said Rashedul Alam, officer in charge at Mahespur police station at the border checkpost in Jhenidah.
“These people went to India from Bangladesh without any valid travel document including passports. Now, they have returned home fearing harassment and detention by police. It is illegal to travel out of the country without valid travel documents, so they will face criminal charges,” Alam told ucanews.
The detainees had mostly returned from Bengaluru, the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka, and New Delhi, the union capital of India, he said.
“These people lived there for the past few years and relied on odd jobs such as domestic help and street scavengers,” Alam added.
Selim Reza, chairman of Kazirber Union Council, a local government body in Mahespur, said tensions have been high following India’s decision to deport Rohingya Muslim refugees two years ago and its updating of the National Registrar of Citizens in Assam this year.
“The BGB has been on high alert to check for border infiltrations. When things go wrong on the other side of the border, it is felt strongly here because Bangladesh is surrounded by India on three sides,” Reza told ucanews.
Whether the migrants are illegal or not, pushing them back to Bangladesh in the dark of the night is inhuman, rights activists say.
“People migrate to other countries for various reasons including economic development, political pressure and religious persecution. If they adopted dubious methods, it is not illegal to deport them, but it should be through proper diplomatic channels, not in the dark of the night,” Daud Jibon Das, secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission in Khulna Diocese, told ucanews.
“Our government needs to look into the causes behind such migration and tackle them so that people don’t adopt unfair means to move to other countries.”
Arijit Sen, a former official of rights group Amnesty India, also criticized the Indian deportations.
“According to the 1946 Foreigners Act of India, the state can detain illegal immigrants only after the court determines their status as irregular, and then the Home Affairs and Foreign Ministry must make diplomatic efforts to deport the people to their country of origin,” Sen told the BBC Bengali Service.
“Legal deportation is a lengthy process, which the state authorities have utterly brushed aside and instead adopted a blanket cleaning operation, which is unacceptable.”