India accused ofillegal deportations targeting Muslims
India ramped up operations against migrants after a wider security crackdown in the wake of an attack in the west in April. Photo AFP
India has deported without trial to Bangladesh hundreds of people, officials from both sides said, drawing condemnation from activists and lawyers who call the recent expulsions illegal and based on ethnic profiling.
New Delhi says the people deported are undocumented migrants.
The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hardline stance on immigration -- particularly those from Bangladesh -- with top officials referring to them as "termites" and "infiltrators".
It has also sparked fear among India's estimated 200 million Muslims, especially among speakers of Bengali, a widely spoken language in both eastern India and Bangladesh.
"Muslims, particularly from the eastern part of the country, are terrified," said veteran Indian rights activist Harsh Mander.
"You have thrown millions into this existential fear."
Bangladesh has seen relations with New Delhi turn icy since a mass uprising in 2024 toppled Dhaka's government, a former friend of India.
But India also ramped up operations against migrants after a wider security crackdown in the wake of an attack in the west -- the April 22 killing of 26 people, mainly Hindu tourists, in IIOJK.
Indian authorities launched an unprecedented countrywide security drive that has seen many thousands detained — and many of them eventually pushed across the border to Bangladesh at gunpoint.
Rahima Begum, from India's eastern Assam state, said police detained her for several days in late May before taking her to the Bangladesh frontier.
She said she and her family had spent their life in India.
"I have lived all my life here — my parents, my grandparents, they are all from here," she said. "I don't know why they would do this to me."
Indian police took Begum, along with five other people, all Muslims, and forced them into swampland in the dark.
"They showed us a village in the distance and told us to crawl there," she told AFP.
"They said: 'Do not dare to stand and walk, or we will shoot you.'"
Bangladeshi locals who found the group then handed them to border police who "thrashed" them and ordered they return to India, Begum said.
"As we approached the border, there was firing from the other side," said the 50-year-old.
"We thought: 'This is the end. We are all going to die.'"
She survived, and, a week after she was first picked up, she was dropped back home in Assam with a warning to keep quiet.
Rights activists and lawyers criticised India's drive as "lawless".
"You cannot deport people unless there is a country to accept them," said New Delhi-based civil rights lawyer Sanjay Hegde.
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