January 23, 2025
NEW DELHI – Police claims that the prime suspect arrested for the recent stabbing of popular Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan in Mumbai is of “Bangladeshi origin” have stoked a political controversy ahead of the crucial Delhi assembly election on Feb 5.
The suspect, Mohammad Shariful Islam Shehzad, 30, was arrested on Jan 19 on the outskirts of Mumbai for allegedly intruding into the actor’s house in an attempted burglary in the wee hours of Jan 16 and stabbing Khan six times.
The 54-year-old actor was discharged from hospital on Jan 21.
The attack raised fears over the lack of security in India’s financial capital, and has featured prominently in ongoing election campaigning in Delhi.
Warring parties have engaged in a blame game over the presence of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants in India’s capital.
The police say the suspect is of Bangladeshi origin, and accused him of entering India illegally. They said he came to Mumbai five or six months ago, and then worked with a housekeeping agency.
This has been rejected by the man’s lawyer, who said his client has lived in Mumbai with his family for over seven years and that the police “have no proof that he is a Bangladeshi”.
Still, the finger-pointing continues ahead of the Feb 5 high-profile assembly election in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Results of the race, predicted to be a tight bipolar contest between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will be declared on Feb 8.
The stabbing incident happened in Mumbai, which is the capital of Maharashtra, a state the BJP governs as part of a ruling coalition. Attacked by opposition parties in the state for failing to prevent the attack, the BJP has latched on to the Mumbai police’s claim of the suspect being a Bangladeshi national to criticise the AAP, which governs Delhi.
The BJP has accused AAP of allowing “illegal” Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants to settle in Delhi and obtain Indian voter identity documents fraudulently so that they can vote.
The issue of alleged undocumented migrants has heightened security concerns, and dominated electoral discourse in Delhi, eclipsing other crucial matters such as the city’s failure to tackle pollution or its local governance drawbacks.
“We have been saying from day one that Bangladeshis and Rohingyas are a threat to the security of Delhi and the country,” Delhi BJP president Virendraa Sachdeva told news agency Asian News International on Jan 19.
“Arvind Kejriwal must explain why he is nurturing Bangladeshis and Rohingyas.”
Mr Kejriwal is AAP’s top leader and a former Delhi chief minister.
The AAP has dismissed the BJP’s allegations, instead blaming the BJP-led central government for failing to stop illegal migration across the country’s borders with Bangladesh.
The AAP has also previously accused the BJP of “settling” Rohingya refugees in the city and diverting resources meant for locals.
In December 2024, the party alleged that Rohingya refugees were being “settled” in Delhi by the BJP and given houses in the capital’s Bakkarwala area, citing a 2022 tweet by then Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri that outlined these details.
The central government had clarifed hours after Mr Puri’s tweet that there was no such move, and that Rohingya “illegal foreigners” in Delhi would continue to stay in settlements until they were deported.
The AAP, which won 62 out of 70 seats in the Delhi assembly in 2020, has governed the state continuously since December 2013, but now finds itself under heavy attack from the BJP, which aims to unseat it with allegations of corruption and illegal migrants.
Mr Amitabh Tiwari, a political commentator, told The Straits Times that the BJP has been raking up the issue of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslim migrants as a way to mobilise support from Hindu voters in Delhi.
“This is one of the strategies to polarise this election so that maybe the Hindu community consolidates and BJP gets a lead there, because without that, it is impossible to win,” he added.
While Muslims voted overwhelmingly in favour of the AAP in the last 2020 Delhi assembly election, the party also enjoyed a slender lead over the BJP among Hindus, thanks to support from marginalised caste groups, Mr Tiwari noted.
Amid the political migrant-bashing – much of it without strong evidence – the police have also been cracking down on suspected illegal migrants.
On Jan 20, Delhi’s lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena, who is appointed federally, directed Delhi police to launch a “special campaign” to identify Bangladeshi and Rohingya “infiltrators” residing in the city.
Since December 2024, the Delhi police, who are controlled by the BJP-led central government, have identified several hundred suspected Bangladeshi “illegal” migrants, and deported at least 30 such individuals from the city.
All this comes at a time when once-close ties between India and Bangladesh are going through a difficult phase, and relations could be further damaged.
Close neighbourly ties between the two countries have soured since former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, a strong Indian ally, was ousted in a popular student-led revolt in August 2024. She fled the country on Aug 5 to land in Delhi, where she is believed to be in a safehouse.
Hasina faces numerous charges, including crimes against humanity, genocide and murder. She has denied the charges. In December, Bangladesh asked India to extradite her for “judicial process”.
Relations have been further strained after attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh and other issues such as disagreements on border fencing.
In September 2024, Bangladesh conveyed its “extreme displeasure” to India following comments made by Indian home minister Amit Shah, who, while campaigning for the Jharkhand state elections, said the BJP would deal with “Bangladeshi infiltrators” by hanging them “upside down”. The comments were widely reported and criticised in Bangladeshi media.
Mr Faiz Sobhan, senior research director at the Dhaka-based think-tank Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, said irresponsible political rhetoric centred on alleged Bangladeshi illegal migrants in India risks further damaging already delicate ties between the two neighbours.
“Bangladesh expects India to… respect and trust it as a neighbouring country which only desires peaceful and prosperous relations with its neighbours. Negative comments only hinder the prospect of strengthening ties,” he told ST.
- Debarshi Dasgupta is The Straits Times’ India Correspondent, covering the country as well as other parts of South Asia for the paper.