In Congress-ruled Karnataka, Bengali Muslim migrant workers come under citizenship scrutiny

In August last year, Rafikul Biswas was picked up from his home in Bengaluru, and accused of being an undocumented migrant from Bangladesh.

Biswas, who is originally from Nadia district in Bengal, spent four months in a detention centre in the city, as his family members and lawyers scrambled to get him out.

Since May last year, several Bengali Muslims have been picked up in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, falsely accused of being Bangladeshis and, in several cases, forcibly expelled from Indian territory.

In Biswas’s case, it was the Congress-ruled government in Karnataka that had acted in a similar fashion.

It took a year-long legal battle for Biswas to be set free, despite the fact that he owned a passport. In the time he spent in the detention centre, he suffered two cardiac episodes, Biswas told Scroll.

On August 4, the Karnataka High Court declared the 32-year-old an Indian and said that his family had been residing in India for “generations”.

But his ordeal was not yet over.

Four days later, on August 8, the police landed up at Biswas’s home again at 6 in the morning and rounded him up along with his wife.

They were among about 3,000 Bengali workers picked up by the Bengaluru City Police as part of a special drive,...

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