Nearly 300 Bangladeshi nationals — men, women, and children — were stopped by the BSF at the Hakimpur check-post near Swarupnagar in North 24-Parganas on Monday morning, while they were attempting to return to their homeland amid fears of legal action linked to the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal.
Sources said the group members were being examined and interrogated thoroughly pending further legal action.
As the SIR exercise continues in Bengal, there has been an increase in the number of Bangladeshi nationals being detained at regular intervals by police or BSF while attempting to leave India, particularly through Bengal’s Indo-Bangladesh border.
The Centre had already launched a coordinated drive to deport undocumented migrants after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. According to local reports, the 143rd Battalion of the BSF intercepted the group on Monday morning as they attempted to approach the riverine stretch of the international border to cross into Satkhira in
Bangladesh.
BSF sources said it was the largest group intercepted so far during such attempts. Interrogating those intercepted on Monday, BSF sources said most of these foreign nationals were poor and had crossed over to this side of the border to make a living.
Sabina Parvin, a Bangladeshi woman in the group in Hakimpur, who said she worked as a maid in Bengal, told reporters: “I was staying here for the past few years earning my bread as a domestic aid. I was compelled to enter India to find a job which I could not get in Bangladesh. We are poor people who came here in search of a livelihood. The drive to identify Bangladeshis has alarmed us, and we decided to return home, even if it means facing uncertainty again in Bangladesh.”
Another migrant, Afsar Khan, said: “I have no legal documents to stay in India. I was living illegally at Birati, but now I am compelled to return because I fear legal action in India.”
Despite such a large number of detentions at Hakimpur, the BSF or police have not issued any official statement on the incident.
The Hakimpur incident comes a day after Ranaghat police district authority nabbed 10 Bangladeshi nationals while attempting to cross the border near Hanshkhali in Nadia.
In a separate development, 55 Bangladeshi fishermen were detained over the past two days at the Fraserganj area of the Sundarbans. The Coast Guard detained 29 fishermen on Saturday night and 26 more on Sunday night. During Sunday’s surveillance along the India–Bangladesh waterway in South 24-Parganas, officers intercepted a Bangladeshi trawler, Mayer Doa, carrying the detained fishermen.
Fast called off
The Pro-Trinamool faction of the All India Matua Mahasangha on Monday called off its hunger strike after 13 days, demanding a rollback of the SIR exercise in Bengal.
The decision followed a written appeal from Trinamool’s All India general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who urged the protesters to withdraw the agitation and assured them the issue would be taken up more assertively in Delhi.
Although the appeal initially divided the organisation, sources said late-night intervention by senior Trinamool leaders led to a reversal of the earlier decision, particularly after the group’s chief, Mamatabala Thakur, fell ill and was admitted to the Thakurnagar hospital on Monday morning.
The organisation’s general secretary, Sukesh Chowdhury, who had rejected Banerjee’s appeal on Sunday, told reporters on Monday that the fast was withdrawn “only after receiving a letter of commitment from the Trinamool Congress”.