India is Illegally Sending Muslims to Bangladesh: HRW

Indian authorities have unlawfully forced hundreds of Bengali-speaking Muslims intoBangladesh, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its latest report on Thursday, accusing the Hindu-nationalist government of targeting Muslims for political gains.

At least 1,500 Muslim men, women and children were expelled across the border - some of whom were beaten up and their Indian identity papers destroyed - between May 7 and June 15, HRW said, citing Bangladeshi authorities. India's government has not released any statistics on how many people it has deported to Bangladesh as illegal immigrants.

"India's ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is fuelling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengali Muslims from the country, including Indian citizens," Elaine Pearson, Asia director at the NGO, said.

"The Indian government is putting thousands of vulnerable people at risk in apparent pursuit of unauthorized immigrants, but their actions reflect broader discriminatory policies against Muslims," she said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has long taken a strong stance against irregular migration. In public speeches around elections, he has often focused on immigrants from Bangladesh, calling them "infiltrators."

The Ministry of Home Affairs gave states a 30-day deadline to round up undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants in May, soon after a deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in which suspected Islamic extremists targeted Hindu tourists. New Delhi claims all explusions were conducted to reverse irregular migration.

The report slammed the rushed operations, saying the government's reason was "unconvincing" as it disregarded "due process rights, domestic guarantees, and international human rights standards".

"The government is undercutting India's long history of providing refuge to the persecuted as it tries to generate political support," Pearson said.

In May, Indian media reported that authorities forcibly detained some 40 Rohingya refugees and dropped them into international waters using navy ships. While the Supreme Court has called it a "beautifully crafted story," the Modi government is yet to publicly deny the allegations.

New York-based HRW said that while some of those deported were Bangladeshi citizens, many Indian nationals who are Bengali-speaking Muslims from states neighboring Bangladesh.

The report said this was possible because authorities carried out swift deportations without due process, which includes verifying the person's citizenship before expulsion.

Of those expelled, 300 people come from the eastern state of Assam, which imposed a contentious citizenship verification process. Others were Bengali-speaking Muslims who had migrated from the eastern state of West Bengal to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Delhi in search of work.

The targeting of Bengali-speaking Muslims is characteristic of the Hindu-nationalist movement in India led by Modi's BJP and related fringe groups. The issue of Bangladeshi immigration is likely to take center stage in West Bengal, one of the few states that the BJP has failed to win, where elections are due in 2026.

HRW said it interviewed over a dozen affected people and their families, including those who were returned to India after being expelled to Bangladesh.

Nazimuddin Sheikh, a migrant worker from West Bengal who had been in India's financial capital Mumbai for five years, said the police raided his home, tore up his identity documents proving his Indian citizenship and flew him along with over 100 others to the Bangladesh border.

"If we spoke too much, they beat us. They hit me with sticks on my back and hands. They were beating us and telling us to say we are Bangladeshi," he said.

Another worker from Assam recalled his ordeal. "I walked into Bangladesh like a dead body. I thought they would kill me because they were holding guns and no one from my family would know."