BENGALURU, India (Kashmir English): Senior Congress leader and former Lok Sabha MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has written to Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, expressing concern over the arbitrary profiling, detention and harassment of Bengali-speaking Muslim citizens of India during police operations to identify undocumented Bangladeshi nationals in Bengaluru.
In his letter, Chowdhury said “heavy-handed actions and procedural excesses” had been committed by local police against Bengali-speaking Muslims, mainly from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district.
Indian citizens
He said a large number of Bengali migrant workers who are Indian citizens with valid identity documents earn their livelihoods as daily-wage labourers in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations across Bengaluru and other parts of Karnataka.
He specifically referred to reports from Siddapura and Whitefield, under the jurisdiction of Varthur Police Station, where several legal residents, mostly migrants from Murshidabad, were harassed on suspicion of being Bangladeshi despite possessing valid identity and citizenship documents.
Chowdhury acknowledged the state administration’s duty to identify undocumented immigrants but said such operations should not become a means of intimidating and harassing Indian citizens on the basis of their language or religious identity.
He urged the Chief Minister to issue strict directions to Karnataka Police to halt the arbitrary profiling of Bengali-speaking citizens.
Chowdhury’s letter also listed the detention of at least 955 people, including women and children, across nine police station jurisdictions in and around Bengaluru.
Trinamool Congress MP Abu Taher Khan has separately written to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah seeking intervention over the treatment of Bengali migrant workers in Karnataka.
In his letter, Khan said nearly 1,900 migrant workers from West Bengal, including around 250 from Murshidabad district, were stranded in different parts of Karnataka.
The interventions follow allegations by civil liberties, lawyers’ and workers’ organizations that hundreds of predominantly poor and daily-wage migrant workers were detained across Bengaluru during a police “verification” drive to identify Bangladeshis.
The organisations, including Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ), Domestic Workers Rights Union (DWRU) and All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), said that police entered settlements, demanded identity documents and detained people even after some produced valid documents.
They also said that police personnel assaulted workers, confiscated mobile phones and examined private messages and call records.
