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Mangaluru: At around 5 am on August 8, a team of police – very few in uniform, several in plainclothes – descended on a makeshift settlement near Sobha Dream Acres in Belagere, East Bengaluru. Police banged on doors, ordering residents to gather their documents and board a waiting pickup vehicle. Those who questioned the police were beaten and shoved into the vehicle. No reasons were given. Within a few minutes, over 100 people were stuffed into the vehicle and driven away.

The raid was part of a broader sweep across Bengaluru’s informal settlements under the Karnataka government’s newly launched ‘Operation Mukta’. Within two days, police across the city – particularly on its periphery – had reportedly picked up more than 3,000 people. With police stations having no place to accommodate so many of them, they were taken to various privately-owned convention centres and wedding halls. 

Speaking to The Wire, many people alleged that the police first destroyed the CCTV cameras installed in the area and then entered their bastis (settlements). Some CCTVs in adjoining buildings were also allegedly switched off.

Different media platforms have cited different numbers, and the police have declined to give any clarity on the exact number of detentions or how many of those detained actually turned out to be undocumented persons. Karnataka home minister Priyank Kharge claimed that the government was conducting a “strict and serious search and verification” and stressed that there would be “absolutely no compromise” in dealing with “illegal immigration”.

‘Snatched our phones, scanned through all the apps’

Hasan Ali*, a 55-year-old man who worked as a labourer at a construction site in Belagere, was one of those dragged out of his house.

“It was so sudden. We were just waking up and the police were already at our doorstep, asking us to line up outside our houses. They weren’t sparing women, children, anyone,” Ali says. As Ali stepped out of the house, he pushed his children and wife out through the small back exit of his kaccha structure, adjacent to Sobha Dream Acres, an upmarket housing complex.

“I had warned them to stay hidden. I thought I would be arrested, and all I wanted was to ensure my college-going children and my wife were safe,” Ali adds.

Ali spent close to ten hours at a marriage hall very close to Varthur police station, under whose jurisdiction the Belagere area falls. The scene there, he says, was “scary.” Young mothers with newborn children, old people who could barely move, young boys and girls who were so embarrassed that they refused to look up –........

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