Indian Muslims illegally pushed across Bangladesh border: Mumbai-based rights group

Authorities in Indian state Assam have illegally pushed at least 145 citizens, mostly Muslims, across the border into Bangladesh since the last week of May.

This information was revealed by an investigative report published in a Mumbai-based rights organization.

For four days since 23 May, a large amount of police carried out a crackdown on Muslims across 33 districts of the Assam state, detaining 300 without any legal process, reports the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP).

While around 150 of the detainees were later released, 145 others were pushed into Bangladesh.

Some of them were eventually repatriated due to stiff resistance from Bangladesh authorities, CJP has learnt through victim interviews and on-field probes.

Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few days. The 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India's north-eastern state of Assam, said that she was called to the local police station on 25 May and later taken to a point at the border with neighbouring Bangladesh. From there, she says, she and around 13 other people were forced to cross over to Bangladesh.

She was not told why. But it was a scenario she had been dreading - Ms Banu says she has lived in Assam all her life but for the past few years, she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an "illegal immigrant" from Bangladesh.

"They pushed me over at gunpoint. I spent two days without food or water in the middle of a field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches," Ms Banu said, wiping away tears.

After those two days in no man's land between India and Bangladesh; she was taken to what appeared to be an old prison on the Bangladeshi side.

After two days there, she and a few others; she is not sure if all of them were from the same group sent with her were escorted by Bangladeshi officials across the border, where Indian officials allegedly met them and sent them home.

It's not clear why Ms Banu was abruptly sent to Bangladesh and then brought back. But her case is among a spate of recent instances where officials in Assam have rounded up people declared foreigners by tribunals in the past - on suspicion of being "illegal Bangladeshis" - and sent them across the border.

This correspondent found at least six cases where people said their family members had been picked up, taken to border towns and just "pushed across".

Officials from India's Border Security Force, the Assam police and the state government did not respond to questions from this correspondent.

Crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are not new in India - the countries are divided by a 4,096km (2,545 miles) long porous border which can make it relatively easy to cross over, even though many of the sensitive areas are heavily guarded.

But it's still rare, lawyers working on these cases say, for people to be picked up from their homes abruptly and forced into another country without due process. These efforts seem to have intensified over the past few weeks.

The Indian government has not officially said how many people were sent across in the latest exercise. But top sources in the Bangladesh administration claim that India "illegally pushed in" more than 1,200 people into the country in May alone, not just from Assam but also other states. Out of this, they said on condition of anonymity, Bangladesh identified 100 people as Indian citizens and sent them back.

In a statement, the Border Guard Bangladesh said it had increased patrolling along the border to curb these attempts.

India has not commented on these allegations.