Bengali man in Thane sent to Bangladesh despite family, government giving citizenship proof: Report
A man from West Bengal who had been living in Mira Road near Mumbai for work was detained by the Maharashtra Police on allegations of being an undocumented Bangladeshi migrant, and pushed into the neighbouring country by the Border Security Force on Saturday, The Indian Express reported.
The West Bengal government said that the man – a 36-year-old mason Mehbub Sheikh – was pushed into Bangladesh even though the West Bengal Police and the state's Migrant Welfare Board had furnished documents proving that he was an Indian citizen.
Sheikh's family said he had been living in Maharashtra for the past two years, and had been staying in the Mira Road area of Thane district, according to The Indian Express. The family members said that they live in the Hossainnagar village in West Bengal's Murshidabad district.
Sheikh was taken into custody on the suspicion of being a Bangladeshi on June 11 while he was drinking tea in Mira Road, and was taken to the city's Kanakia police station, his younger brother Mujibur said.
'He called us from Kanakia police station,' Mujibur told the newspaper. 'We immediately informed the local police and administration, as well as our panchayat pradhan and the migrant welfare board. They said they were in touch with the Maharashtra Police.'
He said that by June 13, the family had sent documents proving his citizenship and lineage in India to the Maharashtra Police.
However, Shabbir Ahmed, the head of the Mahisasthali gram panchayat in Murshidabad, told The Indian Express that they were told that day that Sheikh had been sent to a Border Security Force camp in West Bengal's Siliguri district. Some residents of the village rushed to the camp, but the security forces did not entertain their pleas for help, he said.
Sheikh's family said that on June 14, he called them from Bangladesh, telling them that he had been pushed into the country by the Border Security Force around 3.30 am.
'He has a wife and three children,' his brother Mujibur told the newspaper. 'We just want him back. We don't know how long he can survive in Bangladesh.'
The Maharashtra Police claimed that Sheikh failed to provide documents proving his citizenship. The police said that they do not consider Aadhaar and PAN cards as evidence of citizenship.
'…We asked him to produce his birth certificate or any strong proof,' Meghna Burade, senior inspector at the Mira Road police station, told The Indian Express. 'But he failed to produce the same and also did not provide any other document or his family's documents to support his claim that he is Indian.'
Samirul Islam, the head of the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board, claimed that authorities in Maharashtra did not inform them about Sheikh being sent to a BSF camp, and then to Bangladesh.
Over the past month, Indian authorities have been pursuing a policy to push individuals claimed to be undocumented migrants into Bangladesh. India has pushed back more than 2,000 persons into Bangladesh since the country launched ' Operation Sindoor ', a military operation against terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The legality of the 'push back' policy has been debated in India and internationally. Experts have told Scroll that the policy violated India's obligations under international law and customary international law.
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