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Hakimpur (Bengal-Bangladesh border): It is 5.30 in the morning on June 14. Though the sky is clear, the sun has yet to fully rise. The marketplace remains shuttered and the village is only beginning to stir.

One by one, passengers step down from a private bus at Hakimpur. Among them are women carrying infants in their arms, children clutching their mother’s hands, and elderly men and women, clutching a bag or two. There are about 15. All look harried and it is clear that they have spent a sleepless night. 

The moment they get off the bus, their eyes drift towards a group of Border Security Force (BSF) personnel standing nearby. The families gather under the shade of several trees, sitting silently.

People at Hakimpur, waiting to be pushed back into Bangladesh. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Bengal, news has spread among migrant workers across Bengal that they are to be rounded up and sent into Bangladesh.

A few days earlier, Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari told journalists that according to official figures, around 4,800 people had already been pushed back across the border into Bangladesh. He further claimed that another 8,036 individuals had been identified and would also be sent back.

The BJP has long maintained that undocumented Bangladeshi migrants living in the state should be deported. After coming to power in West Bengal, the party has reiterated its policy of “detect, delete, and deport” to remove those identified as illegal entrants from the country. CM Adhikari has said that suspected individuals would not necessarily be produced in courts but would instead be handed over directly to the BSF for deportation.

People at Hakimpur, waiting to be pushed back into Bangladesh. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.

The campaign, preceded by repeated claims that large numbers of Bangladeshi migrants had entered the state over the years, gained ground from the middle of May. The news that workers from Bangladesh are being caught and sent back has spread through phones where WhatsApp messages and Reels have created an atmosphere of utmost fear. This has, in turn, led to a situation where several have been turning up at the borders of their own volition to await a fate they do not know. 

Not one person who had gathered at the nondescript border village knows anyone there. They know only one thing: that the name of this place is “Hakimpur.” With this knowledge alone, they have boarded trains and buses to Hakimpur, travelling here from different corners of West Bengal. Their destination, they have been told, is Bangladesh. 

Hakimpur is a border village in Swarupnagar block under Basirhat Subdivision of North 24 parganas district of Bengal. It lies along the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.

Over the past few weeks, this village has played host to people who have a single word on their lips, “pushback.” The term is used to describe the physical pushing of people into Bangladesh. In the past year or so, from across the country, Bengali-speaking Muslim individuals have been rounded up and brought to several border villages, to be pushed into Bangladesh. Many have Aadhaar cards and other documents that are testament to their existence in India, but many have no documentation that can establish them as Indian citizens – having crossed the border in search of work at a time when such a crossing was commonplace. But what all of them lack is documentation that can prove that they are citizens of Bangladesh. 

Bangladesh, therefore, refuses to accept many of these individuals through this process, which is known as “push in” in Dhaka. 

This often creates a situation in which these men and women are bracketed in no man’s land, unable to live in India or in Bangladesh, with just uncertainty in the horizon. All are poor, without even the basics to survive.

Rahima Khatun. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.

Rahima Khatun, 22, says that she had arrived in India, crossing the border, because there was no work for her in Bangladesh. “I want my son, elderly father, and my mentally ill mother to survive. We came to India driven by hunger. We do not have any documents. Now we are being told that we will be sent back to Bangladesh,” says Rahima. Her son is two years........

© The Wire