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Indian Express
5 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
How crackdown on ‘illegal' Bangladeshis fuels fear and anxiety among Bengali workers
'Only Bengalis can truly detect the subtle difference in dialect between the Bengali we speak and the one spoken in Bangladesh,' says Sujeet Banerjee, the vice-president of the Samast Bengali Samaj Association and the owner of a gold-testing business in Ahmedabad. To weed out illegal Bangladeshi migrants who have crossed the border into India and have been living in Gujarat, since May, the local police has been collecting, documenting and verifying the identity papers of thousands of migrant workers engaged in jewellery making at KT Plaza and Sahajanand Complex at Ratanpole in Ahmedabad's Walled City and hundreds of smaller units across the city. These highly skilled workers, aged between 18 and 45 years, have since decades been travelling in excess of over 2,000 km from across West Bengal to work in the Walled City, the nerve centre of the gold market in Ahmedabad. According to the Samast Bengali Samaj Association, a workers' collective, nearly 1.5 lakh Bengali migrants are currently engaged in gold, silver and imitation jewellery making units, besides stone embroidery work in the garment sector in the city. At Ratanpol's Sahajanand Complex, the other major gold jewellery manufacturing unit in the city, around 10,000 workers are employed in its nearly 1,200 units. On the fourth floor of an old building near Ratanpole, up a flight of dingy stairs, nearly 350 Bengali migrants sit in cramped quarters, using blow torches to fashion ornaments out of a costly yellow metal whose price has touched nearly Rs1 lakh per tola (10 grams). Occasional whispers in chaste Bengali can be heard in the dark corridors of this four-storey building, where toy shops occupy the bottom two levels and gold jewellery manufacturing units the top two floors. Business has been slow, say workers, adding that they have not been getting as much work as they usually do, with many shops shuttered and others working at just half their normal capacity due to the rising prices of gold in an industry dominated by artisans from Kalkatta (Kolkata). However, another development has hit work of late. While such verification drives have been held all over Gujarat, in bigger cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat, these started in April itself after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam. In Ahmedabad, the police launched a massive crackdown in the area around Chandola lake, where 4 lakh square metres of 11 lakh square metres land had been encroached upon for the last several decades. In the operation, which began at 3 am on April 26, the city police detained 890 people. By May 1, only 209 of these 890 people turned out to be Bangladeshis nationals and the rest were released. In later operations, the Crime Branch rounded up 56 more Bangladesh nationals and started their deportation proceedings in coordination with the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). On August 1, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ajit Rajian told The Indian Express, 'All illegal immigrants were found living in the Chandola lake area itself. Even if they were working in other parts of Ahmedabad, that area alone was viable for them to find accommodations. After the initial drive (on April 26), following which we detained 209 people, 56 people who had fled from Chandola during the demolitions were detained.' Even as the police were cracking down at Chandola lake, KT Plaza received a visit from the police, says a jewellery unit owner. He adds, 'Since they had asked for identification documents for all our workers, the KT Plaza Owners' Association collected the copies of all the Aadhaar cards and voter IDs, and submitted them at the Kalupur police station. The business owners at Sahajanand Complex did the same.' Vishakha Dabral, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone 3, confirmed the police reached out to local associations to contact the units that employ migrants. 'Besides verifying their nationalities through various methods, we also put our local intelligence to work. They checked rental accommodations to make sure that all renters had undergone police verification. No illegal immigrants were found at these units.' When the police came knocking, asking for their identification papers, a manager at a jewellery making said the the workers were 'concerned' at first. 'We assured the workers that they won't face any problem. Once the documents were verified, nobody was detained from our units.' Confirming this, inspector H R Vaghela of Kalupur police station says, 'While the Chandola raid was underway, we conducted a verification drive of Bengali migrants in the Walled City. Not a single illegal immigrant was found.' Confirming that Bengali workers had not faced any harassment after the verification drive, Abdul Rauf Yakub Shaikh, the president of the Samast Bengali Samaj Association, says, 'Bhasa main problem hai, jiski wajah se thoda misguide hota hai (the subtle difference in dialects makes identification difficult). The police verification drive has been going on for over a month at both places (Sahajanand Complex and KT Plaza).' To a question on the dawn crackdown at Chandola, the manager at a jewellery making unit adds, 'The matter in Chandola was completely different since Bangladeshis were detained there. But here, in the gold market, that (being a foreigner) is simply not possible since this business runs on trust.' Banerjee of the Samast Bengali Samaj Association agreed with him. 'This is a highly skilled business that takes years to master. So everyone is known and are verified Bengali migrants,' he says. To a question on the living situation of these migrant workers, a local unit owner said, 'While many workers live where they work, in most units, they live elsewhere. The difference between Kolkata and Ahmedabad is that Hindu workers and Muslim workers live in different neighbourhoods. Since many Bengali Hindus also consume meat, we do so in a respectful manner.'
News18
17-07-2025
- News18
Four arrested for theft of finial of mausoleum at heritage site Sarkhej Roza
Ahmedabad, Jul 17 (PTI) Four members of a gang allegedly involved in the theft of a 150-year-old metal finial piece from a tomb at the heritage site Sarkhej Roza on the outskirts of the city have been arrested, police said on Thursday. Unfortunately, only broken pieces of the sacred finial or `kalash', called 'Panjtan Pak', were recovered as the accused were planning to sell the metal pieces as scrap, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime) Ajit Rajian. While four gang members were nabbed by the Ahmedabad crime branch from Mehsana district, four others were still at large, he said. The Sarkhej Roza complex in Makarba area houses a shrine of Shaikh Ahmed Khattu Ganj Bakhsh, spiritual mentor of Ahmedabad's founder Sultan Ahmed Shah. Built in 1451, this Indo-Islamic masterpiece has been protected by the Archaeological Survey of India since 1921, said DCP Rajian. As per the complaint filed by the Sarkhej Roza committee on July 1, unidentified persons climbed the main dome of the mausoleum of Ganj Bakhsh during the previous night and stole the 150-year-old finial weighing nearly 6 kg. The arrested men were identified as Suresh Dantani, Munna Dantani, Vishnu Dantani and Gopal Dantani, all residents of Mehsana. The gang climbed the tomb using ropes and stole the finial hoping to sell it as scrap material, said a police release, adding that broken pieces of the artifact were recovered from the possession of the arrested persons. The accused are habitual offenders named in several past cases of theft and other offences in Ahmedabad, Mehsana and Patan districts, said the release, adding that search is on for the other four gang members. PTI PJT KRK view comments First Published: July 17, 2025, 19:45 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Indian Express
28-04-2025
- Indian Express
‘What was our fault? We are Indians': Rounded up in drive against Bangladeshis, Chandola lake residents recount 3am raid
Locked houses, deserted streets and anxious residents peering from window grilles: An uneasy calm prevails in Chandola talav na chhapra, two days after 890 people, including 214 minors, were detained from here by the Ahmedabad City Police in a 3am raid as part of an exercise to identify illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack last week. Though 300 of the detainees were released on Monday, after their Indian identity was confirmed, the inhabitants of the slum area on the southern edge of Ahmedabad are a worried lot. 'It wasn't so bad even at the height of the Covid lockdown,' said a man from Madhya Pradesh who was released on Sunday after verification. 'My children were scared and traumatised for no fault of their own,' said the man who had sent his family away to a relative's place. On Monday, Commissioner of Police GS Malik took a round through a section of this vast slum area located between the grouping of the three Chandola lakes, with hordes of television crews following him even as personnel from the power distribution company severed electricity lines. Of 890 detainees, the Ahmedabad City Police on Monday evening said that it had confirmed 143 people as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, with 110 of them allegedly in possession of forged Indian identity documents. DCP Ajit Rajian of the Crime Branch confirmed that 300 Indians had been released from detention with the caveat that all documents remained under suspicion. Meanwhile, 447 persons continued to be under investigation of which 270 allegedly don't have any documentation. DCP Ajit Rajian of the Crime Branch confirmed that 300 Indians had been released from detention with the caveat that all documents remained under suspicion. Even among the 300 persons who have been released from detention, not all came back home. Pointing at the locked doors and abandoned by-lanes, some only wide enough for just one person to pass through, a resident said they had no idea of the number of people in detention, those who have been released, and those who have left the area out of fear of further action by the police. 'We had no sense of time, just humiliation. The police banged on doors with their lathis, people were pulled out of their homes and rounded up. They said they would let the women and children go but they herded them too. The police had a couple of buses and some people were sent in those, while most of us were paraded through the streets to the Crime Branch (headquarters),' said a man in his thirties, among those who were released on Sunday, as he recalled the events of Saturday morning. The midnight police operation was termed by Minister of State, Home, Harsh Sanghavi who called it a 'a historic victory' while calling for 'ghuspatiye (infiltrators)' to be rooted out. At the slum area that houses some 5,000 homes, a group of people is collecting documents to create not only a backup of legal data ready to be presented to the authorities, but also proof that Indian citizens were detained and paraded through the streets. 'We need to be prepared if such a thing happens again,' said a man at a desk being used to compile the documents. 'While some illegal immigrants from Bangladesh were detained last year and deported, such police action has never taken place on such a large scale, without differentiation of who is Indian and who is not. We also want the illegal immigrants to be removed but what was our fault? We are Indians,' he added. Activists, meanwhile, are working to get Indian nationals released from detention. Advocate Shamshad Pathan told the Indian Express, 'There are not just people from Bengal there. There are Indian citizens from Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and other states living in the area. We managed to cross-check and have got at least 12 Bihar residents released… We spoke to locals in their villages and sent the information to the police.' Raising the issue on social media, Ritu Jaiswal, the State President of the Women's Wing of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, posted on X, '…some youths of Baya Panchayat of my constituency Parihar Vidhan Sabha, who had gone to Gujarat to support themselves and their families, have also been caught in this action…The Sarpanch of Baya Panchayat, while identifying these youths, has made it clear through his official letter that all of them are citizens of India and residents of the state of Bihar.' Mujahid Nafees, the Convenor of the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), in a letter to Gujarat DGP Vikas Sahay, called for the suspension of police officials involved in parading innocent people through the streets. The letter stated, '…More than a thousand people were cordoned off with police ropes on all sides and taken to Kankaria Ground in a procession like accused persons, and they were made to sit in the open on the ground in the blazing heat.' The letter further stated, 'The Supreme Court guidelines prohibit the police from tying or taking out a procession of accused persons because it is clearly an act against human dignity. These people are ordinary working-class people who have not committed any crime. Taking out a procession in this manner is very insulting and against the law. Therefore, it is requested that you conduct a departmental inquiry against the police personnel who have disobeyed the SC order and punish them.' Commissioner of Police GS Malik told The Indian Express, 'Till now, 143 people have been identified as Bangladeshis and several people identified as Indians have been released as well. We are still processing documents and questioning people, which is tedious work but our Crime Branch is doing an excellent job.' When asked about the rounding up and parading of Indian citizens along with illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, he said, 'Legally speaking, everyone there has been staying in something that is illegally constructed, which amounts to land-grabbing. Legally, everyone is a land grabber there, it is encroachment.' He further said, 'And, we had no option because if we go there and start questioning house by house, they will lock the houses or run away. So, no right as such has been encroached upon. Further, we have taken care of them and given them food and water.' Meanwhile, around 7 pm on Monday, local residents reported a number of bulldozers having been stationed outside the area. Fearing that a demolition exercise was in the offing, they went to Isanpur police station to ask for some time. The Indian Express attempted to reach out to Zone-6 DCP Ravi Mohan Saini but he remained unavailable for comment. Deputy Municipal Commissioner (DyMC) Riddhesh Raval, who heads the Estate Department, claimed he was ignorant of the entire matter. Vadodara City police have screened a total of 1,700 'suspicious individuals' until Monday evening, a release from the Vadodara City Commissioner of Police said. 'Among them, the documents of 66 individuals are currently under verification. Preliminary inquiries revealed that several of these individuals claimed addresses near the Bangladesh border. To verify their claims and the authenticity of their documents, a team comprising a Police Inspector and officers of the Crime Branch and Special Operations Group (SOG) has been sent to West Bengal,' the release said. During the crackdown, the police have confirmed nine suspects as being Bangladeshi nationals residing illegally in Vadodara city.
Time of India
26-04-2025
- Time of India
Crime branch conducts major operation against illegal immigrants
Ahmedabad: In a major operation early Saturday, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch, with support from the SOG, EOW, Zone 6, and Headquarters teams, launched a combing operation against illegal immigrants in the city. Beginning 3am, the teams moved into various localities, focusing on areas like Chandola. DCP crime Ajit Rajian issued a message early in the morning that more than 400 suspicious immigrants were detained during the operation. Drone cameras were deployed to capture the proceedings, showing police teams entering neighbourhoods to apprehend suspects. You Can Also Check: Ahmedabad AQI | Weather in Ahmedabad | Bank Holidays in Ahmedabad | Public Holidays in Ahmedabad Later, the number of illegal immigrants reached nearly 900 in the city. The detainees were first assembled at the Kankaria football ground before being shifted to Gaekwad Haveli for further action. Officials described the operation as a "historic surgical strike" against illegal immigration and encroachments. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Free P2,000 GCash eGift UnionBank Credit Card Apply Now Undo This action follows the recent Pahalgam terror attack, which prompted authorities to tighten security measures. In a similar drive earlier in Feb, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch detained hundreds of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and deported 15 individuals, including one minor.
The Hindu
26-04-2025
- The Hindu
Over 450 illegal immigrants detained in Ahmedabad
More than 450 immigrants, most of them from Bangladesh, allegedly residing illegally in Ahmedabad, were detained after a combing operation in different parts of the city on Saturday (April 26, 2025), police said. Also read: Telangana begins deportation of 33 Pakistani nationals The police carried out a combing operation in different localities in the wee hours of the day and rounded up foreign immigrants who were residing in the city illegally, said Ajit Rajian, Deputy Commissioner of Police Crime Branch. "More than 450 illegal immigrants, mostly from Bangladesh, have been detained and are being interrogated. If found without valid documents, they will be deported," he said. Mr. Rajian said the operation was carried out jointly by the Ahmedabad crime branch, special operations group, economic offences wing, and police personnel from Zone 6 and police headquarters. He said the detainees have been kept at Kankaria football ground for further action.
