Hakimpur, India – Raisul Islam stands beneath the scorching solar close to a checkpoint in Hakimpur village alongside the border with neighbouring Bangladesh within the North 24 Parganas district of India’s West Bengal state.
His spouse, Rebeka Khatun, 36, and their two sons, Riad, 14, and Jubair, 16, are sitting close by at an unfinished constructing erected with uncooked bricks and cement, because the brutal warmth and humidity, coupled with an absence of potable water, flip the cramped ready room right into a furnace.
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The folks crammed into the constructing are Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, who’ve been branded “unlawful infiltrators” and delivered to the border village as a part of a “detect, delete and deport” coverage launched by the state authorities headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Occasion (BJP), which stormed to power in West Bengal for the primary time solely a month in the past.
India shares a 4,096km (2,545-mile) land border, the world’s fifth-longest, with Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation with historic and cultural ties to India, together with a standard language spoken by hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Hindus on each side of the border, and a century-long historical past of migration of primarily impoverished employees between what’s now Bangladesh and West Bengal, Assam and different Indian states.
However after its sweeping victory in West Bengal, residence to just about 100 million folks, the state’s BJP authorities ordered a crackdown to hint undocumented Muslim migrants, whereas it additionally introduced the development of “holding centres” to detain and finally deport them again to Bangladesh.
That drive has sparked fears not simply amongst Bangladeshi migrants, but additionally amongst sections of Indian Muslims in West Bengal that they too might discover themselves victims of a marketing campaign that the federal government has made clear is pushed as a lot by the non secular identification of its targets as by their authorized standing.
In the summertime of 2025, Indian safety businesses within the neighbouring state of Assam — additionally dominated by Modi’s BJP — forcible despatched dozens of Indian Muslims throughout the border into Bangladesh, accusing them of being undocumented immigrants. Bangladesh despatched them again, leaving them quickly stranded in no-man’s land. They had been finally admitted again into India — however by no means acquired any rationalization, go away alongside justice, for the ordeal they had been put by means of.
Now, a yr later, fears are rising that the identical might occur in West Bengal.
Seek for higher livelihoods
Like many on the Hakimpur border checkpost, 38-year-old Islam, who hails from Satkhira district in Khulna division of Bangladesh, had come to India in the hunt for a greater livelihood.
“We had come right here two years in the past for the remedy of my spouse, who’s affected by a pores and skin illness, however determined to calm down after discovering higher wages right here as in comparison with Bangladesh,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Islam mentioned he paid almost $250 – a considerable quantity for him – to a tout who organized the border crossing for him and his household. They arrived in state capital Kolkata, the place they rented a room on town’s outskirts. The couple labored as masons, incomes about $10 a day between them.
However their lives modified late final month after West Bengal state’s newly elected Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari ordered the deportation of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants, an train his celebration, the BJP, has already carried out in a number of states prior to now decade.
Adhikari’s risk got here with a caveat, although: The eviction would solely goal Muslim Bangladeshis, with Hindus and migrants from different faiths exempt beneath a controversial constitutional modification that imposed a non secular check on asylum seekers for the primary time.
The Bengal chief minister additionally made clear that authorities wouldn’t trouble to take these detained to courtroom earlier than deporting them. In December 2025, India’s Supreme Court docket had declared that international nationals have nearly no rights beneath the Indian structure. In impact, beneath the West Bengal authorities’s method, the onus is on these about to be deported to show why they shouldn’t be despatched to Bangladesh.
Consequently, 1000’s of individuals have been rounded up throughout West Bengal prior to now two weeks and both despatched to detention centres or pushed to the border by safety forces to be “pushed again” into Bangladesh.
Islam mentioned he didn’t watch for the authorities to search out him and his household.
“We determined to give up voluntarily, fearing harassment by the locals and the police for being an immigrant settled illegally right here,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
A number of different migrants gathered on the Hakimpur border publish narrated comparable tales of financial hardships in Bangladesh that compelled them to rent touts and cross the border – many with out authorized paperwork.
Mirazul Ghazi, 42, instructed Al Jazeera he entered India, alongside together with his spouse Sabina Yasmin, 36, and their son Nayem, 18, 5 years in the past in the hunt for higher alternatives. The couple labored as development employees in Kolkata and earned about $12 a day, till the federal government crackdown compelled them to return residence.
“We didn’t face any situation through the previous 5 years until the brand new authorities got here to energy and the owner requested us to vacate the premises. We determined to return, fearing assaults on us by the locals,” Ghazi instructed Al Jazeera.
Located about 80km (50 miles) from Kolkata, Hakimpur and different border checkpoints throughout West Bengal have been witnessing a daily stream of Bangladeshi migrants because the finish of Might.
A police officer posted in Hakimpur instructed Al Jazeera on situation of anonymity as a result of he was not authorised to talk to the media that about 250-300 undocumented refugees and migrants have been arriving every day on the checkpoint, the place authorities, in addition to verifying their citizenship, are additionally recording their biometric particulars to create a digital document of the variety of migrants.
Chatting with reporters in Kolkata on Sunday, West Bengal’s Chief Minister Adhikari mentioned almost 5,000 Bangladeshi residents had been deported, including that his authorities has additionally “established holding [detention] centres in all districts of the state”.
“From these centres, 4,800 Bangladeshi infiltrators have already been deported up to now,” he mentioned. “One other 836 individuals are at present within the holding centres … we’re making preparations to deport the 836 quickly.”
Diplomacy strained with Dhaka
Traditionally strong relations between New Delhi and Dhaka suffered a setback in 2024 when a youth-led revolution in Bangladesh ended the lengthy and autocratic rule of the then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was an in depth ally of India.
The violent rebellion compelled Hasina to take exile within the Indian capital, whereas repeated requests by Dhaka to extradite the chief convicted of crimes in opposition to humanity have been ignored by New Delhi, including to the tensions. Earlier this yr, a brand new authorities led by an anti-Hasina coalition was fashioned in Bangladesh, which is making an attempt to fix the strained ties.
However the West Bengal crackdown has prompted new diplomatic tensions between the neighbours, with Dhaka calling for an adherence to established procedures to confirm the nationality of undocumented migrants.
On Monday, Bangladesh’s Overseas Affairs Adviser Shama Obaid instructed a information convention in Dhaka that they’ve despatched “12 to 13 letters to New Delhi” over the problem.
“There’s a mechanism” that Indian authorities ought to comply with, she mentioned, as she warned that the crackdown on Bangladeshi migrants might have an effect on relations between the 2 international locations.
The Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) additionally mentioned it thwarted not less than 18 makes an attempt by India’s Border Safety Drive (BSF) to push about 180 migrants throughout the border into Bangladesh since June 4. On Monday, the 2 forces started their three-day talks over the West Bengal deportations.
Responding to an earlier criticism by Dhaka of India conducting “unlawful push-ins” of Bangladeshi migrants, Indian international ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal instructed reporters final week {that a} “bilateral mechanism” was already in place between the 2 international locations.
“All international nationals in India, if they’re right here illegally, together with from Bangladesh, we’ve legal guidelines to take care of them, and they are going to be accordingly handled,” Jaiswal mentioned on Friday.
“And as soon as we refer these instances to the Bangladeshi facet, for them to confirm the nationality of those folks, and as soon as it’s verified, then we take ahead the deportation course of,” he added.
Jaiswal mentioned New Delhi has despatched “a number of or many of those requests,” which stay pending with the Bangladeshi facet. In keeping with media studies, India’s international ministry has shared particulars of greater than 2,800 suspected Bangladeshis with Dhaka for nationality verification.
Rights teams, in the meantime, have termed India’s transfer as “fully unethical”.
Elaine Pearson, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, a worldwide nonprofit, mentioned she was “deeply involved” in regards to the present state of affairs in West Bengal.
“Even the detainees with none legitimate paperwork must be given authorized illustration in order that no Indian citizen is wrongfully expelled from the nation,” she instructed Al Jazeera, calling the deportations “unlawful”.
Deportations stoking non secular tensions
The deportation of primarily Muslim Bangladeshi migrants can also be stoking non secular tensions in West Bengal, which erupted after the BJP’s rise to energy in a state the place 27 p.c of its inhabitants is Muslim.
For many years, the BJP has campaigned in opposition to Bangladeshi migrants, with federal Residence Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s closest aide, calling them “termites” throughout an election rally in Assam, one other BJP-governed border state the place hundreds of thousands of Bengali-origin Muslims reside, and have confronted the same crackdown.
Although India is residence to tens of 1000’s of Buddhist refugees from Tibet, and Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, the BJP has constantly singled out Muslim migrants – the Bangladeshis and the Rohingya – over their faith. In 2017, greater than 700,000 primarily Muslim Rohingya fled a genocidal marketing campaign by the Myanmar army, with an awesome majority of them taking refuge in southern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, and a small variety of them discovering refuge in a number of Indian cities, together with New Delhi.
The BJP’s focusing on of Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants ties in with the celebration’s bigger coverage of marginalising and persecuting India’s 200 million Muslims to be able to flip a constitutionally secular nation into an ethnic Hindu state.
Rights activist Teesta Setalvad mentioned the Indian authorities are “performing solely on a preconceived agenda and rhetoric” in opposition to a specific group, accusing the federal government of not following its personal tips whereas performing in opposition to undocumented migrants.
“Sadly, cops are selecting up folks randomly and placing them in detention centres and making an attempt to push them again as if they’re a commodity. We worry that people could be detained illegally within the holding centres,” she instructed Al Jazeera, demanding the federal government instantly launch knowledge on the undocumented migrants housed in varied detention centres in West Bengal in addition to on these “pushed out” to Bangladesh.
In the meantime, in Hakimpur, as nightfall falls and the solar begins to vanish behind the tall coconut timber, Islam turns tearful as he stands near each his sons.
“We took shelter in India simply to present a superb life to our youngsters. We had no ulterior motive. However the incessant hounding and humiliation by a bit of individuals has compelled us to return with bitter reminiscences of a land that teaches non-violence and kindness for all,” he mentioned.
Moments later, a gaggle of safety forces bundles the household inside a car and takes them to a detention centre 18km (11 miles) away.
