India unlawfully pushes Bengalis into Bangladesh: HRW

Indian authorities are forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali residents, mostly Muslims from West Bengal, into Bangladesh without basic due process, Human Rights Watch said today (17 June).

Actions by India's Border Security Force (BSF), combined with efforts by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) to block those expelled from entering, have left dozens of families stranded at the "zero line" between the two countries, the rights body said.

BGB has reported that since 1 June, it has foiled 21 attempts by the BSF to push more than 200 people, including children, into Bangladesh's border districts.

The chief minister of India's West Bengal state, Suvendu Adhikari, who took office after the Hindu-majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party won the March elections, said the government, under its "detect, delete and deport" policy, had detained hundreds of "Bangladeshi infiltrators" and forced nearly 5,000 people "to go back."

"Indian authorities are cruelly dumping families into Bangladesh or leaving them stranded at the border, ignoring their basic human rights," said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"The government should stop unlawfully expelling people, ensure procedural safeguards, engage with Bangladeshi authorities to verify citizenship, and end this dismaying animosity toward Muslims," she said.

"No one, whatever their nationality, should be left to spend nights in an open field between two lines of armed border guards," Meenakshi added.

HRW said it interviewed nine people who witnessed Indian border security troops bring groups of people to the border at night and push them through cuts in the barbed wire fencing into Bangladeshi territory.

In several cases, Indian border guards eventually allowed the people to return after Bangladeshi border guards denied them entry, the rights body said.

In Panchagarh, witnesses described a 75-hour standoff after the BSF allegedly attempted to push 10 people, including children, into Bangladesh on 5 June.

"The group had advanced approximately 50 feet inside Bangladeshi territory," said Rubel Hossen, 35, a Bangladeshi villager.

"Local residents alerted the Bangladesh border guards, and after the forces arrived, the group retreated and took up position on an embankment in no man's land," he said.

"What I witnessed appeared to be a war-like standoff, with large deployments of BSF and BGB. Repeated flag meetings between the two forces failed, until the BSF finally escorted the group back to the Indian side," he added.

At dawn on 6 June, Indian border guards pushed six members of two Bengali Muslim families — including three men, two women and a child — toward the Tetulbaria border in Bangladesh, HRW said.

While Bangladeshi border guards stopped them from entering, Indian border guards prevented them from returning to India, leaving the families stranded. After the families spent the night in the open, the Indian authorities allowed them to return, the rights body said.

Families stranded at zero line

On 8 June, Bangladeshi border guards said the BSF took back 11 people, including a pregnant woman and her child, after they were stranded for nearly 48 hours at the "zero line" — the narrow no man's land along the border — in Thakurgaon district.

HRW said that just ahead of the March elections in West Bengal, India's election commission carried out a hurried and controversial revision of voter lists that dropped over nine million names, triggering threats of detention and deportation.

A flawed and discriminatory citizenship verification process in Assam state in 2019 had already left more than 1.9 million people stateless, while thousands of Bengali-speaking residents of the state have been held in detention centres and many were unlawfully expelled, the rights body said.

The BJP chief minister in Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has repeatedly lashed out at Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state, calling them "illegal immigrants".

"We take them to a convenient location near the border, and literally push them across the border. Now, such an atmosphere has been created in Assam that several illegal Bangladeshis have started going back on their own," Himanta said.

Indian officials contend that numerous Bangladeshis are living in India illegally and have offered to help them return voluntarily.

HRW said genuinely voluntary repatriation, including with assistance, is compatible with international human rights standards, but India should not coerce repatriation or forcibly expel people.

Bangladeshi authorities have said they will not accept people pushed across the border outside legal channels, insisting that any returns must follow proper verification and established repatriation procedures.