Nineteen migrant workers from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, who had been held in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district earlier this month on suspicion of being undocumented Bangladeshi nationals, walked free on Friday, according to a report by The Hindu.
The 23 laborers, all residents of Samserganj and Sahabad in Murshidabad, were picked up by police on September 4 from their homes in Chunchiapara-Ganesh Nagar, an area falling under the jurisdiction of the Sirgiti police station. Authorities justified the crackdown by claiming the men had repeatedly been asked to produce their documents but had failed to appear before the police despite several summons.
That account, however, was contested by the workers’ families. Kins alleged that the men were taken away late at night even though they were carrying valid identification voter cards, Aadhaar numbers, and PAN cards.
According to Bilaspur’s Senior Superintendent of Police, Rajnesh Singh, the nineteen men were finally let go once their identities were cross-checked against electoral rolls, records maintained by the local administration, family registries, and documents establishing permanent residence. The New Indian Express, which quoted Singh, reported that the fate of the remaining four detainees still hangs in the balance. “Further steps regarding the remaining four will depend on the reports we receive,” Singh said.
Officials attributed the initial confusion to the fact that the men’s names had reportedly been removed from voter lists during West Bengal’s special intensive revision drive, an administrative lapse that appears to have triggered their wrongful detention in the first place.
The incident, however, garnered condemnation from the Chhattisgarh chapter of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties, which pointed out that none of the 23 men had been served show-cause notices before being detained, nor were they given a fair opportunity to prove the authenticity of their documents.
In May 2025, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had instructed states and Union Territories to verify the credentials of individuals suspected of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar. As highlighted by the scroll, in the aftermath of the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, police forces in several states, many governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, have intensified their scrutiny of Bengali-speaking residents, particularly those from Muslim communities, compelling them to furnish proof of Indian citizenship.
“It has been continuing for years. Now speaking Bengali outside our state seems to be tantamount to having to prove one’s citizenship. We should not forget that Bengali is our mother tongue and has been recognized as a classical language by none other than the Union Government of India,” Trinamool Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP, Samirul Islam, said
