Four Muslim traders from Bengal given 72 hours to leave Odisha on claims of being Bangladeshis

Four Muslim traders from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district were given a 72-hour deadline to leave Odisha’s Nayagarh after being accused of being Bangladeshis and Rohingya migrants, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The men had lived in Nayagarh for several years selling mosquito nets, quilts and woollens on two-wheelers. All four of them were from the Sagarpara gram panchayat in the Jalangi block of the Domkal subdivision in Murshidabad.

On November 27, one of the men, Saheb Sekh, said that police officers had come to their rented accommodation and accused them of being “Rohingya living illegally in India”, The Telegraph reported.

Sekh said that the officers asked for his identity papers.

“I showed him my Aadhaar and voter card,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “He was not satisfied. He called my landlord and asked all of us to report to the station by 5pm.”

Later in the day, the four men went to the Odagaon police station, where an officer asked them to leave the town within three days. The men alleged that they were also accused of being Rohingya and Bangladeshis for speaking in Bengali.

The police also took signed copies of their documents.

Abdus Salam, one among the four men, claimed that another group that was also present in the police station and harassing them was part of...

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