The night of July 26 was the most horrific one of his life, said Md Kabir, a 45-year-old migrant worker from North Dinajpur.

His limbs tied up with ropes, he was lying prostrate in a camp of the Haryana police in Panipat police station area, getting relentlessly beaten by cops, he said to The Telegraph over the phone from Panipat on Monday.

“All they wanted was that I should admit that I am a Bangladeshi. As I screamed and claimed that I am an Indian from Bengal, the torture increased. The beatings fractured my left leg, but the torture didn’t stop. The cops gagged my face and started throwing water on my face. I could not breathe and fainted,” Kabir said in a trembling voice.

“I am yet to recover from the shock. After I regained my senses, I was beaten again with sticks, and another round of water was poured on me. In the morning (of July 27), I was asked to go,” he added.

The hapless man — who used to work in a carpet factory at Panipat — somehow dragged his fractured leg to reach his rented accommodation, where some others helped him by taking him to a doctor. He is now sitting jobless with his plastered leg.

“I don’t know why the police are behaving here in such a manner. They are indiscriminately picking up Bengali-speaking people, particularly if they happen to be Muslims, and branding them as Bangladeshis,” said Kabir.

Md Junaid, a worker from North Dinajpur who also ended up with a fractured leg after police beatings, used to work in the same factory, Kabir said.

He said his ordeal started on July 26 noon.

"A police team reached our carpet factory. We were told to accompany the cops to the Panipat police station for document verification and made to stand in a queue with around 800 people, including women and children,” he said.

After an hour, Kabir, along with three others, was asked to come out of the queue. They were taken to a room inside the police station and told their Aadhaar cards were fake.

“The policemen told us to confess we were Bangladeshis. That's when the torture started. They simply did not believe I am from Ukushbhasa, a village in the Soalpara area of Goalpokhor block in North Dinajpur," Kabir said. "I was gagged and beaten up there and then put in a jeep and taken to a camp where I was tortured the whole night."

Over a week has passed. As he can't work, he is left with little money.

"On Saturday, Md Azad, a Trinamool leader of our area, met me and handed over some money. But I can't work with my broken foot and don’t know how to run my family,' he said.

He said that hundreds of Bengali-speaking migrants in Panipat were spending sleepless nights. Many were leaving for Bengal.

Kabir said he has his wife and two children back home in Ukushbhasa. “I am at my wit's end. Back home, I won’t get a job. Here in Panipat, there is always the fear that the cops pick me up again,” he said.

Imran Ali Ramz, a former MLA and a Congress leader from North Dinajpur, has reached Panipat.

“Since Sunday, I have been visiting the areas where the migrant workers stay. Local Congress leaders are helping me. I am interacting with them and assuring them of help. On August 6, a delegation from the state Congress will visit Panipat and we will meet senior police officers with our protest against the treatment meted out to these migrant workers,” Imran said over the phone.

Migrants return

Around 100 migrant workers who had been working in Haryana returned home in South Dinajpur district on Monday following incidents of torture and harassment by Haryana police.

They hired buses to reach Buniadpur in their native district, “As we speak Bengali, we are being tortured by the police. We could not bear it anymore and hired a bus to reach home today (Monday),” said worker Tafidul Islam.