India has deported hundreds of people without a court order to Bangladesh, according to officials on both sides, in what activists and lawyers describe as unlawful expulsions based on racial profiling.
New Delhi says the deportees are illegal immigrants, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government has pursued a hardline immigration policy, particularly against those from neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, whom senior Indian officials have likened to "termites" and described as "infiltrators."
These measures have also raised concerns among India's estimated 200 million Muslims, particularly among speakers of Bengali, a language widely spoken in both eastern India and Bangladesh.
"Muslims, especially from the eastern part of the country, are gripped by terror... Millions have been thrown into this existential fear," said veteran Indian human rights activist Harsh Mander.
Relations between Bangladesh and India, which borders it on three sides, have been strained since the 2024 uprising that toppled the government of Sheikh Hasina, which was allied with New Delhi.
However, India also escalated its operations against migrants after a broader security crackdown following an April 22 attack that killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, in Indian-administered Kashmir.
New Delhi blamed Pakistan for the attack, a charge Islamabad denied, and the tension escalated into a four-day military confrontation that left more than 70 people dead.
Indian authorities carried out an unprecedented nationwide security crackdown, arresting thousands and eventually forcing large numbers across the border into Bangladesh at gunpoint.
“Don’t you dare”
Rahima Begum, from Assam state in eastern India, said police detained her for several days in late May before taking her to the border with Bangladesh, even though her entire family was born in India and had lived there for generations.
“I’ve lived here all my life; my parents and grandparents are all from here. I don’t know why they did this to me,” she said.
Indian police took Begum and five other people, all Muslims, to the border and forced them into a swamp in the dark.
“They pointed to a distant village and told us to crawl to it,” she told AFP. “They said, ‘Don’t you dare stand or walk, or we will shoot you.’”
Begum said Bangladeshi residents who found the group handed them over to border police, who “beat us up severely” and ordered them to return to India.
The woman in her fifties said, "As we approached the border, we heard gunfire from the other side. That's when we thought, 'This is our end. We're all going to die.'"
But she survived, and a week after her arrest, she was sent back to her home in Assam with a warning to keep quiet.
- 'An ideological hate campaign' -
Human rights activists and lawyers criticized India's campaign, calling it "illegal." "People can only be deported if there's a country that will accept them," said Sanjay Hegde, a civil rights lawyer based in New Delhi.
He added that Indian law does not allow deportations without due process.
Bangladesh said India has pushed more than 1,600 people across its border since May. Indian media reports say the number could be as high as 2,500.
Bangladesh's border guards announced they had turned back 100 of those pushed across the border because they were Indian citizens.
India has been accused of forcibly deporting Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing Burma by placing them on naval ships that landed them off the coast of their country.
Human rights activists say many of those targeted in the Indian security campaign are low-wage workers in states ruled by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Indian authorities did not respond when asked about the number of people detained and deported as part of the campaign.
However, the chief minister of Assam said that more than 300 people had been deported to Bangladesh.
Separately, the police chief of Gujarat state stated that more than 6,500 people had been arrested in the western state, home to both Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
Many of these were reportedly Bengali-speaking Indians who were later released.
"People with a Muslim identity who happen to speak Bengali are being targeted as part of an ideological hate campaign," said activist Mander. Nazmuddin Mondal, a 35-year-old construction worker, said he was arrested by police in Mumbai, India's financial hub, flown on a military plane to the border state of Tripura, and then forced to enter Bangladesh. However, he was able to return to his hometown in the Indian state of West Bengal.
"Indian security forces beat us with batons when we insisted we were Indian," Mondal said, adding that he now fears even going out to look for work.
"I showed them my government-issued identity card, but they didn't listen," he said.
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