‘Disappeared’: In Bengal, Muslims picked up from homes in midnight raids, sent to detention centres

Parbin Khatun remembers the night of July 29 vividly.

Khatun had returned to her home in Bengal’s Murshidabad district from Kolkata shortly after midnight.

Around 12.30 pm, she was in bed, when a group of men knocked on the door of their home in Ramakantapur village.

“They called out my father-in-law’s name,” Khatun said.

When 61-year-old Ibrahim Sheikh opened the door, Khatun said, a group of seven or eight men surrounded him. They were in civilian clothes but Khatun said they appeared to be police officials.

“They demanded to see his documents and so he showed them his Aadhaar and voter cards,” Khatun said. “Then, they asked him, ‘Aapni ki Indian, na Bangaldeshi?’” Are you Indian or Bangladeshi?

Sheikh asserted that he was Indian, not Bangladeshi, Khatun said. But the men said they had information that Sheikh was not an Indian citizen.

They went on to grab Sheikh from behind, Khatun said. As they roughed him up, pinning his hands at the back, he became “very afraid” and “agreed with whatever the police were saying”.

Khatun said the men forcefully took her father-in-law away, alleging that he is a Bangladeshi national. “They did not show us any written document or police complaint against him,” she said.

Khatun said she appealed to the men to...

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