New Delhi, Feb. 20: Bengal has told the Supreme Court it is opposed to deportation of Bengali-speaking people without checks to establish whether they are Bangladeshis.

It is different if these people are stopped at border check-posts, the state’s counsel, K.K. Venugopal, said during the hearing of a public interest plea today. “But once they have become residents, with jobs and proper identification, they cannot be arbitrarily picked up on suspicion and deported because they speak Bengali.”

Such packing-off violates fundamental rights if the people turn out to be Indian citizens, Venugopal said. Even if they are not, they should be given an opportunity to defend themselves, he added.

Venugopal agreed illegal migration was a serious problem but expressed concern that many Bengali-speaking people in Delhi and Mumbai were being picked up and escorted to the border in an arbitrary manner. “They may be Bengali-speaking Indian citizens.”

The lawyer said deportation orders should be vetted by courts to ensure genuine citizens were not harassed.

The state government was replying to the court’s notice on the petition filed by Delhi’s Abu Hanif alias Millan Master to challenge his deportation order.

Delhi police picked up Hanif in 2000 under the foreigners’ act on the suspicion that he was a Bangladeshi.

The foreigners’ regional registration office passed an order to deport him soon after.

He lost the case in Delhi High Court, though he had an Indian passport and ration card.

Hanif claimed that he was born in Bengal’s Basirhat, in North 24-Parganas, and later shifted to Delhi where he traded in scrap. The police said he was a resident of Khagara village, under Bashirhat police station, of Bangladesh’s Khulna district.

Hanif wasn’t given a chance to produce papers, nor was he told why he was being considered a foreigner, his lawyer Prashant Bhushan said.

The apex court stayed his deportation on November 18, 2000.

Hanif said he was targeted because he was a member of a “particular community” staying in a locality where “foreigners” were allegedly living illegally.

He said the police’s claim that he had entered India in 2000 was false and that he had been issued a Delhi administration card in 1990 and a voter ID in 1995.

In passing the deportation order, he said, the government had neither followed the repealed Illegal Migrants (Deter-mination by Tribunals) Act, 1983, nor the foreigners’ act.

The migrants act places the onus of proving the nationality of a person on the complainant. The foreigners’ act places that onus on the person under suspicion. It also makes it mandatory for the government to give a fair and reasonable hearing to the person.

The apex court will take a decision on the matter later.