India dumping families at BD border: HRW

Indian border forces have been pushing ethnic Bengali residents — mostly Muslims from West Bengal — into Bangladesh at night, through cuts in barbed wire fencing, without any legal process, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday.

The New York-based rights group said detaining or deporting individuals without due process constitutes a violation of fundamental human rights, and called on India to immediately end what it described as unlawful expulsions.

“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 HRW.

“The government should stop unlawfully expelling people, ensure procedural safeguards, engage with Bangladeshi authorities to verify citizenship, and end this dismaying animosity toward Muslims.”
Pushbacks foiled, standoffs documented Since 1 June, the Border Guard Bangladesh has foiled 21 attempts by India’s Border Security Force to push more than 200 people — including children — into Bangladesh’s border districts, according to the report.

HRW interviewed nine witnesses who described BSF personnel bringing groups of people to the border under cover of darkness and pushing them through gaps cut in barbed wire fencing.

One of the most alarming incidents occurred in Panchagarh on June 5, when a 75-hour standoff followed a BSF attempt to push 10 people across the border. Rubel Hossen, 35, a local villager, told HRW that the group had advanced approximately 50 feet into Bangladesh before retreating to an embankment in no man’s land after BGB forces arrived. “What I witnessed appeared to be a war-like standoff with large deployments of BSF and BGB,” he said, adding that those stranded were exposed to severe lightning and heavy rain on the first night.

Similar incidents were documented in Tetulbaria on June 6, involving six members of two families, and in Thakurgaon on June 8, where a pregnant mother and her child were among 11 people left stranded at the zero line for nearly 48 hours.

HRW linked the pushbacks to a broader political campaign targeting Bengali-speaking Muslims in India’s border states.

Ahead of elections in West Bengal earlier this year, India’s election commission carried out what the report described as a “hurried and controversial revision” of voter lists that dropped over nine million names. An Indian activist told HRW that an estimated 400 people are currently held in detention centres at the West Bengal border, and that removal from electoral rolls has become a direct trigger for arrest, detention and expulsion.

The pattern was illustrated starkly in the account of Hasibur Islam, a union council member from Panchagarh, who said he met a family from Siliguri carrying Indian biometric identity documents — Aadhaar cards. Despite the oldest member having voted four times in previous elections, their names were dropped from the rolls this year, leading to their detention and attempted expulsion.

The report pointed to explicit policy statements by senior Indian politicians. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, following the BJP’s election victory in March, said his government had detained hundreds of what he called “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and forced nearly 5,000 people to leave under his administration’s “detect, delete and deport” policy.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma went further, openly describing the method. “We take them to a convenient location near the border, and literally push them across the border,” he said, adding that the atmosphere his administration had created was prompting some to leave on their own.

Human Rights Watch stressed that India is bound by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to protect everyone within its jurisdiction, regardless of nationality or immigration status. The report said that leaving people without food, water or shelter may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under international law.

It further noted that pushing or stranding children at borders violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obligates states to respect children’s right to preserve their nationality.

“No one, whatever their nationality, should be left to spend nights in an open field between two lines of armed border guards,” Ganguly said. “India should end these brutal expulsions, and both governments should ensure that border management never again comes at the cost of basic human dignity.”