An alleged assault on four migrant labourers from Murshidabad in Tamil Nadu’s Thiruvallur has surfaced 10 days after the purported incident.
According to a police complaint filed almost a week ago in a police station in Murshidabad district, on July 15, at a construction site in Thiruvallur where Sujan sheikh, his brother Milan and two others- Sahil Sheikh and Babu Sheikh - were assaulted by a group of people.
Three weeks ago, the four had travelled from their village in Murshidabad to Chennai in search of work, and reached Thiruvallur where they were hired at the construction site.
“Some local residents confronted us, asked our names and where we were from. When they heard us speaking in Bengali, they started beating us with iron rods and sticks. They kept accusing us of being Bangladeshis,” Sujan Sheikh told PTI from his home in Murshidabad.
Sujan returned home post-surgery on his fractured arm at a hospital in Thiruvallur with his brother and companions.
Sujan said the cops in Chennai had refused to listen to their complaint against the attackers.
For more than a month, Bengali-speaking people, especially Muslims from the districts of Murshidabad and Cooch Behar have been allegedly subjected to linguistic-discrimination and accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.
A few days ago, the Haryana Police had sent a list of over 50 migrant workers to the Bengal police to verify their identity.
For the last four years, Sujan and others from his village have been regularly travelling to Tamil Nadu for work. Until the assault 10 days ago, they had never faced any trouble.
“We have been travelling to Chennai for work for the last four years. Nothing of this sort has ever happened before. We are still in shock,” Sujan said. He also claimed that they were denied wages for 11 days of work before returning home.
Murshidabad police confirmed receiving the complaint and are coordinating with the cops in Tamil Nadu.
On July 18, when Sujan and his companions lodged their complaint, four Bengali-speaking youths - two from Assam and two from Bengal – were picked up by the Gurugram police from a slum in Jharsa, Gurugram, and taken to Sector 10A police station.
They claimed they were picked up on suspicion of being undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants.
Two of them, migrant workers from Chirang in Assam and North Dinajpur in West Bengal, alleged they were forced to strip down to their underwear inside the police station as officers “verified” their identities.
“They kept saying we were Bangladeshis, no matter how many times we said we are Indian. We had our identity cards with us. Still, they made us undress. We were kept like that for nearly 12 hours,” one of the detained workers has claimed.
The men were later sent to a detention centre in Badshahpur, where they claimed 12 other detainees were already being held. Only two of the four were released after four days. The others remain detained.
The Gurugram police have denied the charges.
The alleged mistreatment comes against the backdrop of an ongoing crackdown in Haryana against undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.
Earlier this month, Mamata Banerjee had claimed that Bengalis were being subjected to “linguistic profiling” in several states including Haryana, Rajasthan and Odisha. “They are being pushed across the border, even if they have Aadhaar or voter ID,” she alleged.
The BJP has dismissed Banerjee’s claims as “baseless fear-mongering,” with party leaders accusing her of playing identity politics ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.
