Bangladeshis in the City

Bangladeshis in the City

The Government Railway Police (GRP) on Monday did a highly commendable job by apprehending as many as 31 Bangladeshi nationals in the Guwahati railway station. These Bangladeshi nationals had not only entered India illegally, but had also found various kinds of employment in Bangalore city where they have been living for the past several years. If some of the women – there were eight women in the apprehended group – were working as domestic maids in India’s hi-tech city, then some worked as daily-wagers, rag-pickers and so on there. This group of 31 Bangladeshi infiltrators were in fact on their way home in different districts of Bangladesh from Bangalore, and were travelling to Agartala through Guwahati by railway train, after which they would have walked out to their home country through the porous international border in Tripura. What these persons have revealed before the police and the media after being apprehended in the Guwahati railway station is even more startling: one of them has boldly stated that he had sneaked into India about 22 years ago, had first worked in the national capital, got married to a Bangladeshi woman there, acquired a ration cards voter identity card, PAN card and Aadhar card, opened a bank account and also cast his vote in Indian elections in New Delhi three to four times. This person has also claimed that one can easily illegally enter India from Bangladesh by paying just about Rs 10,000 to dalals who allegedly have links with our border guards.

What is important to note in the above context is that those self-styled intellectuals and human rights activists who have been campaigning against the exercise of preparing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) do not get to read news like the one that emanated from Guwahati on Monday about apprehension of 31 illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Even as the adult persons among the 31 have clearly said that they are Bangladeshi nationals who had entered India illegally, those opposed to the NRC would continue to say that ‘genuine Indian citizens’ who speak Bengali and are Muslims by faith are being harassed and hounded in Assam in the name of identifying Bangladeshi infiltrators.

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