India unlawfully, forcibly deporting Muslims into BD

Indian authorities have expelled hundreds of ethnic Bengali Muslims -- many of those Indian citizens -- to Bangladesh in recent weeks without due process, in what Human Rights Watch (HRW) has described as a "discriminatory" and "unlawful" crackdown on Muslim communities.
HRW urged the Indian government to halt all unlawful expulsions, ensure access to legal representation and appeal, and investigate alleged abuses by security forces.
In a damning report published on Wednesday, HRW accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Indian government of arbitrarily detaining and forcibly deporting people -- including elderly women, children, and registered refugees -- by tagging them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Between May 7 and June 15 alone, over 1,500 people, including about 100 Rohingya refugees, were expelled to Bangladesh, according to Border Guard Bangladesh.
"This is not immigration control -- this is discrimination fuelled by political motives," said Elaine Pearson, HRW's Asia Director.
"The authorities' claims that they are managing irregular immigration are unconvincing given their disregard for due process rights, domestic guarantees, and international human rights standards."
The HRW investigation, based on interviews with 18 individuals and families affected by the crackdown, details harrowing accounts of forced deportation. In many cases, the expelled were impoverished internal migrant workers from Indian states such as West Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh, with no ties to Bangladesh.
Expelled at Gunpoint
Among the most disturbing cases is that of Khairul Islam, a 51-year-old former schoolteacher from Assam, who said he was beaten, tied up, gagged, and forced at gunpoint to cross into Bangladesh on 26 May. "The BSF officer beat me when I refused to cross the border into Bangladesh and fired rubber bullets four times in the air," he recounted. He returned two weeks later, risking his life again.
Another victim, a 67-year-old disabled woman named Maleka Khatun, was detained on May 24 in Barpeta district and expelled at 3 a.m. three days later. She had spent nearly six years in a detention facility and had a case pending before the Guwahati High Court. Her son found out about her whereabouts only after she called from Kurigram, Bangladesh.

A 44-year-old man from the same district was pushed across the border on May 26, despite having an appeal pending in court.
"BSF authorities told him if he walked back from the border they would  shoot him," his son told HRW.
Citizenship Rights Ignored
Many of the deportees were declared irregular immigrants through ex parte orders -- decisions issued without the presence of the accused -- by Assam's controversial Foreigners Tribunals.
HRW noted that from 1964 to early 2025, these quasi-judicial bodies have declared over 165,000 people as illegal immigrants, often based on flimsy evidence such as minor document inconsistencies or spelling errors in names.
The flawed 2019 National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in Assam had excluded nearly two million people, including many Bengali-speaking Muslims. Although the BJP-led government had earlier promised not to expel anyone with pending court appeals, HRW documented multiple cases where such individuals were detained and forcibly removed.
In a particularly egregious case, a man in Barpeta whose appeal was pending in the Supreme Court was taken from his home at midnight, expelled across the border, and made to walk back undetected. "I walked into Bangladesh like a dead body," he said. "I thought they would kill me because they were holding guns and no one from my family would know."
Crackdown Across BJP-Run States
The HRW report highlights a coordinated campaign across BJP-ruled states. In Maharashtra, authorities expelled workers from West Bengal, even though they presented valid Indian identity documents. One worker, Nazimuddin Sheikh, was expelled on June 9 after police tore up his documents. He was flown to Tripura with over 100 others and beaten when he protested his Indian citizenship.
In Gujarat, the state demolished over 10,000 homes, businesses, and mosques in Bengali-speaking settlements around Ahmedabad. Nearly 6,500 people were detained across the state; 890 of them, including women and children, were paraded through the streets. MP Samirul Islam wrote to Home Minister Amit Shah warning of "entire Bengali-speaking settlements being targeted and set ablaze."
In Rajasthan, authorities reportedly expelled at least 148 people to Bangladesh after detaining over 1,000 suspected "illegal immigrants." In Odisha, 444 male migrant workers were rounded up in a single district.
Rohingya Refugees Forced Into the Sea
HRW also cited shocking incidents involving Rohingya refugees. In early May, Indian authorities reportedly forced 40 Rohingya men, women, and children into the sea near Myanmar from an Indian naval vessel -- with only life jackets to survive. The UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, called it "an affront to human decency" and a "serious violation" of the principle of 'nonrefoulement'.
A 20-year-old Rohingya refugee in India said: "My childhood was destroyed by genocide, my teenage years swallowed by refugee life… and now my adulthood faces a fate worse than anything I've survived -- being sent back to a land where genocide still continues."
Although the Indian Supreme Court refused to block Rohingya deportations in May, saying foreigners must be returned under Indian law, HRW accused the government of violating international conventions it has signed, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Bangladesh Pushes Back
Bangladesh's Foreign Ministry has repeatedly expressed concern, writing to India on May 8 that the "push-ins" were "unacceptable" and that Dhaka would only accept individuals confirmed as Bangladeshi nationals through proper diplomatic channels.
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