‘Shoved into buses, sent to Bengal': TMC MPs flag Bengali migrants' detention in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra
Also, party's Rajya Sabha MP and West Bengal Migrant Labour Board chairman Samirul Islam said that some members of the Matua community have been detained in Pune, Maharashtra.
Their reaction came a day before Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to lead a rally in Kolkata in protest against the alleged detention and harassment of migrant labourers from Bengal in other states.
'The nine workers who have been kidnapped by Chhattisgarh police… have now been let free. Now they have been forcibly pushed into buses, to be forced to come back to Bengal. This is completely illegal,' said Moitra, the Lok Sabha MP from Krishnanagar, in a video message posted on X.
'I urge the Chhattisgarh DGP. Are you aware of what your police are doing? They put them in illegal detention. We have no idea where they are. Now you have released them and you are shoving into buses to put them into Bengal. They are not criminals, they have every right to be in whichever state they want to be. You have no right to throw them out of the territory of Chhattisgarh. I hope you realize this. If you don't, I am going to take you to court,' she added.
On Monday, she had pointed to the detention of nine migrant workers from Nadia district, which is part of her constituency, in Chhattisgarh.
Islam wrote on X, 'Now members of our beloved Matua community have been facing harassment by the anti-Bengali BJP government in Maharashtra . Hatred in politics spares no one. BJP leaders are trying to malign Bengali-speaking migrant workers by branding them as Rohingyas. Recently, our office at the West Bengal Migrant Workers' Welfare Board received information about police harassment of at least six members of the Matua community from North 24 Parganas, currently residing in Pune, Maharashtra.'
'We have already reached out to the affected family, who confirmed that the police in BJP-ruled Maharashtra have detained Arush Adhikary and at least five others including minors, on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals. Shockingly, BJP MP and Union Minister of State Santanu Thakur himself belongs to the Matua community,' he said.
'We have also learned that the Pune police are reportedly refusing to recognize identity cards issued by the All India Matua Mahasangha (AIMM), besides EPIC and Aadhar cards…' he added.
These incidents come in the wake of similar detentions of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Odisha, Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.
Last month, seven migrant workers detained in Mumbai were pushed into Bangladesh, who were later brought back.
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First Post
26 minutes ago
- First Post
Why Hamas, Hezbollah must face the same moral scrutiny as Israel
Days after Hamas's October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, I reread Japanese author Haruki Murakami's 2009 acceptance speech for the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. In it he said, 'Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg […] [y]es, no matter how right that wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg.' While this was widely interpreted to be a pro-Palestinian message, I believed that Murakami was making a subtler point about 'the wall' in his metaphor, which he also calls 'The System'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'The System,' Murakami tells us, 'is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others—coldly, efficiently, systematically.' This description, I believed, tacitly extended the blame to forces like Hezbollah and Hamas. So I read it as a call to re-examine blind, angry loyalty to one's own side. Subsequent reporting suggested Murakami had been more stridently critical of Israel elsewhere and that Murakami inadvertently held anti-Israel notions due to 'the cultural milieu in which he dwells'. This question in itself doesn't interest me, but another re-reading has convinced me that the speech's inclusiveness was less intended than superimposed by a wishful reader. This realisation was disappointing at several levels. The primary one being that Murakami's greatest appeal was his alienation, an estrangement from society that seemed to place him beyond familiar political divides. His distaste for Japanese nationalist writers like Yukio Mishima is well-known, and his novels like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle were deeply political, but they seemed to emerge from the depths of the individual 'psyche' where mundane political ideas gave way to universal emotions and images. So this binary, uninsightful nature of his political stances felt like a betrayal of promise. It is my impression—an unverified one—that his 'anti-nationalist' pronouncements grew shriller after the annual Nobel Prize speculation began. Murakami, the master storyteller, surely needn't be warned of the perils of creating paper-thin antagonists. The playwright Aaron Sorkin insists, 'You can't think of your villain as a villain'. Instead, he suggests writing them like 'they're making their case to God about why they should be allowed into heaven'. To be fair, Murakami didn't make Israel out to be an outright villain, and he did defy calls from Palestinian groups to decline the prize. Still, his metaphor of a state having convinced its people to 'kill others—coldly, efficiently, systematically' comes dangerously close. And it's telling that such calls to conscience fall only upon Israel: is Murakami unaware that forces like Hamas and Hezbollah, with the sponsorship of the likes of Iran and Qatar, strive to 'coldly, efficiently, systematically' kill Israelis? Is he also unaware that terrorist acts are designed to invite state clampdowns and cause alienation? STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD His framing of the issue is of interest because it is indicative of a wider moral incoherence that surrounds this and other conflicts and only accentuates their tragedy. Observe how Murakami's wall-and-an-egg symbolism perpetuates the symbolism of an armed state at war with unarmed people. Gaza's tragedy (and that of Palestinians as a whole) would have been better approximated with the image of an egg being crushed between two steel blocks: one gripping the egg in place and the other closing in and smashing it against the first. The second steel block consists of Palestinian extremist groups and their sponsor states. And it is precisely because serious moral pressure isn't mounted upon this second block that Israeli suffering is perpetuated and Palestinian tragedy compounded. To illustrate, let's take Israel's accusation of Hamas 'unlawfully' embedding military assets in densely populated areas and using them as human shields. New York Times paraphrases Oxford Professor Janina Dill countering the charge with '[e]ven if Hamas uses civilians as human shields, those civilians are entitled to full protection under international law unless they directly participate in the fighting'. Israel can neither be expected to ask its soldiers to get shot rather than fire at terrorists attacking from behind civilians nor will it give up its military objectives. Then why not call for an international ban on Hamas and for the sanctioning of its supporters? Such pressure may well force Hamas to return the hostages and thereby compel Israel to cease fire. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Such calls don't arise because global realpolitik and ideological pressures suppress them. Also, the fact that these pressures weigh disproportionately upon individual states suggests that keeping states off balance is desirable to multiple players. But let us stay with the moral discourse here. Counterintuitive though it might seem, international law allows 'certain , including uses directed toward 'self-determination''. Using this outdated anti-colonial provision, ideologues project terrorism as a struggle for self-determination (therefore a ) to justify violent means. [Incidentally, it isn't clear that Hamas's military wing is legitimate in international law.] But even with 'just cause', , and so a more roundabout intellectual exercise begins. For example, Neve Gordon points to Israel's celebration of the roles of Zionist paramilitaries—some murderous—in Israel's creation, seemingly to equate future Hamas's legitimacy with Israel's today. He bemoans the tendency of states to describe civilians they've killed as human shields while describing civilians killed by 'non-state actors'—Gordon won't call them terrorists—as 'civilians.' He also suggests that states locating military offices in densely populated areas should invite similar condemnation. Citing anti-colonial struggles, Gordon then justifies 'the ability to blend into the civilian population' as being 'necessary for military survival' of paramilitaries, given the 'asymmetry of power.' He further holds state militaries' 'new surveillance technologies and enhanced weapon systems' responsible for forcing paramilitary groups to hide in 'densely populated urban settings' and concludes, 'Hamas, in this sense, is no outlier.' This is a 'hardboiled egghead' version of Murakami's egg-and-wall stuff. A question worth posing here is why Gordon doesn't worry that making a military case for human shields is self-defeating, as it would lead us to the concept of STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Legal scholar Louis René Beres writes, 'When Israel's enemies declare an IDF attack on a Gaza high-rise building to be 'disproportionate,' they wittingly ignore ipso facto that the rule of proportionality does not demand any tangibly equivalent infliction of military harms, but only an amount of force that is militarily necessary.' He also introduces a legal concept Gordon assiduously avoids: 'perfidy'. 'To the extent that Hamas and its insurgent allies routinely practice a form of 'human shields', the Palestinian side is guilty of 'perfidy' .Any such practice is illegal prima facie and qualifies as a conspicuously 'grave breach' of the relevant Geneva Convention. The most critical legal effect of perfidy committed by Palestinian insurgent leaders is to immunise Israel from any responsibility for inadvertent counterterrorist harms done to Arab civilians.' Ideologues don't worry about military cases because their arguments aren't really about principle but about perception: about weaponising Israel's status as a state and a democracy against it. And despite weak disclaimers to the contrary—like Gordon's—Hamas's violence is sought to be semi-legitimised in the name of the Palestinian people. Once again, using wall-and-egg oversimplifications. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Consider the harm caused in one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the war: humanitarian aid. Israel claims Hamas diverts aid supplies for its use and to fund its war. Accusations of Israeli blockades weaponising hunger have even yielded International Court of Justice warrants against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Gallant. Israel and pro-Israel voices deny there is starvation and accuse critics of lying. But where's Hamas, the governing party in Gaza prior to the war, in all this? A top Hamas official stated that 75 per cent of Gazans were refugees, so it was 'the UN's responsibility to protect them' and that Israel was obliged to provide for Gaza's citizens under the Geneva Convention. The hostage-taking, civilian-massacring Hamas demanding that Israel take care of its civilians is a stunning double standard, but one that aid agencies and the UN appear to go along with. Meanwhile, most aid agencies object to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private entity backed by the US and Israel, on relief supply citing principle. As aid agencies themselves warn of a humanitarian crisis, why not engage with it for the sake of Palestinian civilians, even if under protest? And why shouldn't governments diplomatically extract concessions from Hamas to facilitate transparent aid delivery? Surely some brakes on the second steel block are also warranted. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD I sincerely believe Israel must be held to very high standards to demonstrate that it is not targeting civilians militarily or through aid. But I also believe Hamas must be compelled to cooperate to stop the suffering of Palestinians, release hostages, and be held accountable for October 7. It's a foregone conclusion that most intellectuals will emphatically agree with the former and weasel out of the latter. Sacrificing the egg for the second steel block: that is moral incoherence. The world's intellectuals, media, and institutions must do better. Can Israel seriously be expected to validate people like UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese—the news of whose sanctioning by the US is just breaking—who reportedly justified Palestinian violence? Or journalist Mariam Barghout, who writes in Al-Jazeera of the 'exhilaration' she felt on October 7: '[T]he Palestinians have struck Israel where it has struck Palestinians for more than 75 years: lives and land.' Or Professor John Mearsheimer, who was questioned about his moralistic tone against Israel when he displayed none against alleged Russian 'atrocities' in Ukraine: 'I don't have to provide a consistency of approach. I'm focusing on what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. I'm not comparing what happened in Gaza with what happened on October 7 and what's happened in Ukraine. Those are different issues. You could write a piece like that, but I'm sorry, there's nothing wrong with me analysing what the Israelis are doing in Gaza, period.' Are there no errors or sins of omission? STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Conclusion The universal images and emotions of Murakami's fiction can actually help us understand the soul-crushing situation of the Palestinians and Israelis' existential fears. Instead we're served up tendentious agenda-driven narratives, which in truth drive the steel blocks that smash the egg. If aggressive Zionism crushes the Palestinian people, so do ideologies that undermine legitimate states, provide cover to terrorists, and give terror-sponsor countries a free pass. I don't have a personal axe to grind in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I believe India's official position on the Gaza War—condemning terrorism, justifying responsibly striking back, but seeking peaceful resolution of the issue—is the moral one. But, for decades now, I have listened to smug voices shield Pakistan and its terrorist proxy-soldiers and undermine India in exactly the same way. That's enough time to develop an aversion for vacuous moralising and intellectual contortionism. It is better to call terrorism 'terrorism', to know that justifying it in any context is perilous, and that creating ideological space for it is reprehensible. And to those very people who might loosely hurl about terms like 'Islamophobia' or 'genocide justification', I would say Hamas ruled Gaza brutally, with a fundamentalist ideology, killed Israelis including children, took hostages, raped women, and now negotiates to return dead bodies—so just take a look at what it is you are justifying. This isn't 'resistance', it's depravity. And I would question whether such critics genuinely weep for Palestinian suffering and death or find in it a vent for their anger and a useful weapon against an enemy. Incidentally, Murakami's own relations with the political Left suffered a blow when he was semi-cancelled for misogyny in his writings. I won't go into its merits here, but I can't help but sympathise with an author who shared what was within his 'fragile shell' only to find himself up against a 'high, solid wall' made up of 'bricks in the wall' he thought were his allies. The writer is the published author of two novels (Penguin, India and Westland, India) based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Calcutta HC seeks affidavits from Centre, Bengal and Delhi govts on deportation of Bengali migrant family
The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday sought affidavits from the Union government, the West Bengal government and the Delhi government in connection with the arrest and alleged deportation of a Bengali-speaking migrant family from Birbhum district. The court move came on a habeas corpus petition filed by the relatives of the family. The matter will be heard next on August 6. A division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra issued the directions after being informed that parallel proceedings on the same matter were pending before the Delhi High Court — details that had not been disclosed in the current plea. Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Raghunath Chakraborty submitted that the whereabouts of the detained family remain unknown. Delhi Police counsel Dhiraj Trivedi told the court that a writ petition had been filed in Delhi High Court challenging the deportation, but was dismissed after the deportation was carried out. 'They were deported in June, that is in the Delhi High Court order. The matter is pending in that High Court. They have suppressed the facts in this court,' he said. Additional Solicitor General Ashok Chakraborty, appearing for the Union government, submitted: 'If the order of deportation is executed, how is there a habeas corpus?' Senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, representing the West Bengal government, said, 'Let them (the Centre) file how many Bengalis have been detained and how many Bengalis have been pushed back (into Bangladesh).' The court expressed displeasure over the petitioners not disclosing that they had already approached the Delhi High Court. After the order was dictated, Banerjee told the bench: 'Who will decide (who is to be detained)? The appropriate authority is not the police or constable. You cannot pick up someone just because they are speaking Bengali. There are procedures. These three or four cases are very alarming.' The bench also orally asked during the hearing whether there was any basis to allegations that Bengali-speaking people were being picked up and deported from various states 'suddenly' in June, though no formal order was passed on this point. The ASG submitted that under the Foreigners Act, individuals without valid passports or visas can be deported. Responding to that, the Deputy Solicitor General told the court, 'After the Pahalgam attack, people in Kashmir were also rounded up, and everyone was released. People speaking Bengali were not picked up and deported. Hundreds were rounded up, but most were released.' According to Bhodu Sheikh of Birbhum, his daughter Sunali Khatun, son-in-law Danish Sheikh, and their minor son were deported by officers of the K N Katju Marg police station under Delhi's Rohini police district on June 26. He claimed the family had travelled to Delhi on May 5 and were detained on June 18. Anjela Bibi, a relative from Murarai in Birbhum, also alleged that the family — who worked as waste pickers — were picked up from Bengali Basti in Rohini's Sector 26, along with three others from Birbhum. As per entries in a Delhi Police general diary, the detained persons allegedly told police they were from Bagerhat, Bangladesh. They were subsequently handed over to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), and later to the Border Security Force (BSF), before being deported.
Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Why Siddaramaiah has got a booster as he scraps aerospace park land bid near Bengaluru
The question of whether he will continue as the Karnataka Chief Minister is still up in the air, but Siddaramaiah seems to have just cemented his base among the farming community in the state. On Wednesday, the CM dropped a land acquisition bid by the government for a proposed 1,777 acre high-tech defence and aerospace park in rural Bengaluru's Devanahalli. This came after three-and-a-half years of protests led by farmer unions such as Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) and Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, pro-Dalit forums, labour organisations, and literary personalities. The residents of 13 villages in Channarayapatna in rural Bengaluru, where the proposed project was to come up, also joined the protests. The state government has, however, said it would acquire land from those who consent to give their land for any future industrial projects. The now-scrapped proposal in Devanahalli was initiated under the previous BJP government in August 2021. The fertile land — critical for crops like vegetables, fruits, and flowers that supply 30% of Bengaluru's agricultural needs — was key to many farmers' livelihoods, making its acquisition a deeply emotive issue. In 2022, when the farmers launched their protests, Siddaramaiah was the Leader of Opposition and had publicly made a promise to the farmers that he would scrap the acquisition if Congress comes to power. After assuming office, his government's sanction of a final acquisition notification in April 2025 was seen as 'betrayal' by the protesting farmers. The issue ended up gaining momentum, with several leading figures such as actor-politician Prakash Raj, historian Ramachandra Guha, and writer Devanur Mahadeva also joining in to allege that the Congress was prioritising corporates over farmers' interest. This criticism intensified following the 'Devanahalli Chalo' protest on June 25, which gained national attention after police detained protesters, further denting the government's image. Agreeing to the demand to scrap the proposal would bolster Siddaramaiah's image as a 'pro-farmer leader' and bring him respite after a series of setbacks. Last year, the CM was under fire over his family's involvement in the alleged Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) scam. In June this year, there was a stampede at Royal Challengers Bengaluru's victory parade in Bengaluru. Within the Congress, Siddaramaiah faced complaints from several MLAs over lack of funds to execute projects in their constituencies. Adding to this was the leadership tussle between him and Deputy CM D K Shivakumar. It only intensified with the countdown beginning for November, when Siddaramaiah would hit the half-way mark of his tenure – the point at which a change of guard is supposed to take place, as per an unwritten agreement claimed by Shivakumar's supporters, which is denied by the Siddaramaiah camp. Amidst these developments, his decision to drop the Devanahalli land proposal has led to Siddaramaiah being projected as a leader 'responsive to grassroots movements'. A S Raghu, a farmer and member of the Channarayapatna Land Struggle Committee, an apex body organising the protests, told The Indian Express, 'If not for Siddaramaiah at the helm, the decision would not have been in our favour. Some senior leaders in the government tried to create divisions among the protesting farmers to serve vested interests, but they failed. The CM reinforced his commitment to farmers' livelihood and we are grateful to him.' However, the decision to withdraw the notification appears to have upset pro-industry leaders who wanted to position Karnataka as a hub for the aerospace and defence sector. Industries minister MB Patil had earlier argued that neighbouring states Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were aggressively expanding their industrial base by offering large parcels of land at subsidised rates. The minister expressed concerns about Karnataka suffering losses if companies in this sector shift their operations to other states. At present, Karnataka, a national leader in the aerospace and defence sector, contributes nearly 65% to the country's output in these sectors. The state is home to major industry giants such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Safran, Boeing, Airbus, Collins, and Lockheed Martin, with a well-established aerospace park already operating near the Kempegowda International Airport in Devanahalli. To further consolidate its strategic advantage, the Karnataka government felt the need for an additional aerospace and defence park in the region and pushed for strengthening infrastructure around Bengaluru.
