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The Wire
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Wire
Gurugram Police Releases Bengali Migrant Workers, Only Ten ‘Confirmed Bangladeshis' Remain, It Says
Government The police are yet to confirm the exact number of detainees released. They now say that verification is ongoing and 'only highly suspicious individuals will be picked up'. Women from an Assamese Muslim neighbourhood in Gurugram's Khatola village on their way to meeting their detained husbands. Photo: Alishan Jafri Gurugram police public relations officer Sandeep Kumar confirmed that all but ten detainees have been released. He claimed that these ten people are undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh and that the police have now initiated the process for their deportation. 'Nobody is there except ten individuals who are confirmed Bangladeshis,' he said. However, he did not confirm the total number of people who were detained and later released. When The Wire asked on what basis these individuals were identified as undocumented immigrants while the others were released, Kumar claimed, 'The ten suspects possess documents that prove they are from Bangladesh.' Asked if the authorities' drive to identify and deport undocumented Bangladeshi citizens will go on or intensify, he said, 'verification is going on and only highly suspicious individuals will be picked up'. When asked if the hundreds of people detained and released earlier were also 'highly suspicious', Kumar questioned the source of this figure, although he added that the drive is ongoing and that official numbers can't be shared at this point. Regarding the process of releasing detainees, he said, 'We contacted the district administrations of the areas the detainees claimed as their home. After verifying their citizenship through the respective district officials, we released them.' The detainees' release comes amidst growing public scrutiny and pushback from opposition leaders and civil society. Calling the detentions in Gurugram 'linguistic terrorism', West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee wrote that she was shocked to see 'these terrible atrocities of double-engine governments on Bengalis in India'. 'What do you want to prove? This is atrocious and terrible. We are not going to tolerate this.' In a video message on X, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra compared the drive to 'living in Nazi Germany'. Terming these ' wide-net detentions ' illegal, Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi wrote on X, 'This government acts strong with the weak, and weak with the strong. Most of those who are accused of being 'illegal immigrants' are the poorest of the poor: slum-dwellers, cleaners, domestic workers, rag-pickers, etc. They have been targeted repeatedly because they are not in a position to challenge police atrocities.' On Friday, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya visited Bengali migrants in Gurugram. Amanur Sheikh's shanty in the Bengali ragpicker colony near the Kapasheda border between Delhi and Gurugram. Photo: Alishan Jafri Large numbers of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have fled to Assam and West Bengal. When The Wire visited a neighbourhood in Gurugram's Khatola village known for its large Assamese Muslim population – and where residents claimed nearly 2,000 people used to live – it was almost entirely deserted. Only around a dozen women were present, who were about to visit their husbands and other male relatives held in detention centres. Barring a few people, the entire neighbourhood has apparently fled to Assam's Dhubri following the recent crackdown. And now after the release of detainees, many, including Sayra Bano and her family, are going back to Assam. All the migrant workers The Wire covered in its previous report from Gurugram have been released. Amanur Sheikh, brother of Hafijur who was detained in a Sector 10A 'holding camp', said that his brother has been released but that they are still living in fear. Rafukul Islam was released by the police on July 23 after being held in detention for over five days. He was detained on July 18 and taken to the Basapur City Centre vote camp, which the police refer to as a 'holding centre'. According to Islam, around 150 people were detained in that facility. He claimed that 15 or 16 among them were Hindus and were released earlier. The remaining detainees, he said, were Muslims from Assam and Bengal. 'There were 27 people I personally knew who were detained along with me. We were all picked up from the same neighbourhood. The police have released all of us,' he said. When asked what the police told them before releasing them, Rafukul replied, 'They didn't say anything. They just made us sign on a few papers and told us to go. They said, ' Tum log ab jao yahan se, tumhara ho gaya abhi ' ('You people can go now, it's done').' He also claimed that the police confiscated their mobile phones. 'A few people got their phones back, but the rest of us, including me, didn't get ours.' Following their release, Islam and the others left the National Capital Region and returned to their villages. Rafukul hails from the Kokrajhar district of Assam. 'When things return to normal, we will come back,' he said. 'Our livelihood is there, how can we stay away for long? What will we eat? But right now, we can't stay in Gurugram. Who knows when they might come and detain us again?' When asked on what grounds the police detained them, Islam said, 'The police asked us where we were from. When we said we're from Assam, they replied, 'No, no, you're from Bangladesh, go sit in the vehicle.' Then they took us to the centre.' The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Wire
03-06-2025
- Business
- The Wire
Following Backlash, Delhi PWD Removes Photos of People Cleaning Drains Without Safety Gear
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Government Following Backlash, Delhi PWD Removes Photos of People Cleaning Drains Without Safety Gear Alishan Jafri 9 minutes ago Workers, activists and court rulings indicate that rainwater drains can receive sewage, making them dangerous to clean without safety gear. Representative image of an open manhole. Photo: Sharada Prasad CS/Flickr, CC BY 2.0 Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute now New Delhi: For much of April and May, the Public Works Department (PWD) in New Delhi was on a social media overdrive, especially on X, where it posted a series of photographs of workers manually cleaning drains. On Tuesday (June 3), however, it removed these photographs and cleaned its social media timelines after one of these posts went viral and caused public backlash. In these now-deleted posts, workers could be seen cleaning drains without gloves, boots, goggles, masks or any other kind of protective gear. In some photographs, cleaners were seen even without shirts and shoes on, raising questions about the consequences of such work for their health as well as about whether the cleaners' work could fall under the purview of manual scavenging law. Dr Akshay Dongardive, national president of the Federation of All India Medical Associations, said: 'This can cause skin ailments [and] amplify lung infections, and long-term exposure without care or precautions may be fatal.' Earlier this year, the Delhi government had vowed before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to desilt 23 major drains in the state by May 31. Chief minister Rekha Gupta and PWD minister Parvesh Verma had reportedly met PWD officials last month to ensure that these deadlines were met. This is why workers all over Delhi are clearing its rainstorm drains. In November 2024, the NGT had sought a report from the Delhi government on the action it would take to stop the flow of untreated sewage into rainwater drains. It said that both the Delhi Jal Board and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) 'are responsible for causing water pollution by permitting sewage of sanitary drains to be discharged in stormwater drains which ultimately pollute River Yamuna… causing health hazards.' After the death of a five-year-old girl who drowned in a stormwater drain in Palla last year, the NGT had also observed that untreated sewage was flowing in a rainwater drain near north Delhi since no sewage system had been laid out. The Wire visited a drain near Arjun Nagar and Hauz Khas and found that desilting work had been paused for the day on a visibly polluted drain with a punctured water supply pipe. Three different sources at the spot said that the workers had left the site. Locals said that the drain is desilted both manually and with machines. This reporter met four workers at two different spots in the area who said that they did not have protective equipment to carry out cleaning work with. Incidentally, in at least twelve photographs posted and subsequently deleted by the PWD, workers are seen without safety gear. Three workers from Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh told The Wire that while sewage does not get mixed with rainwater drains where they work – a posh colony in south Delhi – this is not the case in other areas in the city. Forty-five-year-old Jeet Kumar, a homeless cleaning worker who now only works private cleaning assignments, said that he quit cleaning public drains because of the dangers associated with it and the low pay – workers are paid Rs 500 for a day's work with no job security, he said. 'You never know when you can lose a limb, inhale poisonous gases, get a cut or go blind if the waste splashes in your eyes while you're working with a shovel … There can be glass pieces and metal debris,' he said. The workers from Kasganj confirmed Jeet's claim that they are paid Rs 500 for a day's work. 'Gloves, boots and clean water are the bare necessities,' Jeet said. 'You need clean water to immediately wash the eyes if something goes in.' Asked if they are given protective gear, a group of workers The Wire spoke with initially said yes but confirmed on the condition of anonymity that they do not receive this equipment. 'The only security equipment we have are MCD green jackets through which we can be identified by the public and police.' Much of the cleaning is carried out by machines but is done manually in places where machines cannot go, a government source said. 'If there's sewage, why would anyone agree to do it?' he asked. Gupta, Delhi's chief minister, has taken a similar stance. The Indian Express on Tuesday quoted her as saying: 'Look, every drain has its own situation. Machines don't work everywhere and people don't work everywhere either. There may be places where machines can't reach. Right now, the government's target is to ensure that all drains are completely cleaned, and the work is being carried out with full attention to the court's guidelines.' While the drains in the photographs are indeed stormwater drains and, according to officials in the PWD not under the remit of manual scavenging law, worker testimonies, activists and the NGT's remarks paint a more complex picture. Manual scavenging is officially defined as manually handling human excreta in 'insanitary latrines', in open drains or pits where such latrines discharge human excreta into, on railway tracks, or other spaces that the Union or state governments notify. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 makes it illegal for someone to hire a person to do manual scavenging without providing them with devices and protective gear as mandated by the Union government. It also separately defines the 'hazardous cleaning' of sewers and septic tanks as its manual cleaning without protective gear and cleaning devices as notified by the government. It makes it illegal for someone to employ a person to perform hazardous cleaning. Bezwada Wilson, activist and national convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan that advocates for ending manual scavenging, rubbished claims that these are 'just stormwater drains'. He said that while officials may claim that the drains contain just silt, if one 'take[s] a look at its colour, it's not just silt but also sewage. It's black in colour. Everybody knows what it is…' Wilson asked, 'Why are people dying?', alleging that deaths from manual scavenging occur in many places within Delhi. The PWD's photos have also invited sharp criticism from opposition figures. 'These horrifying images,' wrote Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha, 'fail to prick the conscience of the people basking in the glory of 'double/triple engine' government.' Former Aam Aadmi Party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj accused the 'BJP government' of having a history of exploiting Dalit and poor people. 'Legal action should be taken against them,' he wrote on X. PTI reported that the PWD sacked a junior engineer because the workers in its photos had worked without safety equipment. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News BJP Spent 40% More on 2025 Delhi Elections Compared to 2020 2020 Delhi Riots: Court Says WhatsApp Chats Cannot be Substantive Evidence in Murder Cases Delhi University Students Protest Last Minute Change in Evaluation Process As Delhi Courses Through Another Punishing Summer, Residents Are Once Again Pushed to the Brink Will Resist Suppression of Press Freedom, Says Himal as Delhi HC Quashes Vantara's Case After Delhi HC's Rebuke, Abhijit Iyer Mitra to Take Down X Posts Against Newslaundry Journalists 'Thrown Into the Sea': How India Allegedly Deported 38 Rohingya Refugees Without Due Process Founders of Ashoka Should Know that a University Can't be Equated With Hierarchies of a Corporate Office How Contract Labour and Caste Inequality Undermine India's Sanitation Drive About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
