June 18, 2026
DHAKA – Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Indian authorities of forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali residents, mostly “Muslims” from West Bengal, to Bangladesh without due process.
In a statement issued yesterday, the international rights organisation said actions by India’s Border Security Force (BSF), coupled with efforts by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) to prevent their entry, have left dozens of families stranded in the “zero line” area between the two countries.
According to HRW, BGB has foiled 21 attempts by the BSF to push more than 200 people, including children, into Bangladesh through border districts since June 1.
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, who took office after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the state’s March elections, said his government’s “detect, delete and deport” policy had resulted in the detention of hundreds of alleged “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and forced nearly 5,000 people “to go back”.
“Indian authorities are cruelly dumping families into Bangladesh or leaving them stranded at the border, ignoring their basic human rights,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at HRW.
“The (Indian) government should stop unlawfully expelling people, ensure procedural safeguards, engage with Bangladeshi authorities to verify citizenship, and end this dismaying animosity toward Muslims.”
HRW said it interviewed nine people who witnessed BSF personnel bringing groups to the border at night and pushing them through breaches in the barbed-wire fence into Bangladeshi territory.
In several cases, the BSF later allowed people to return after Bangladeshi border guards refused them entry.
Witnesses in Panchagarh described a 75-hour standoff after the BSF attempted to push 10 people, including children, into Bangladesh on June 5.
“The group had advanced approximately 50 feet inside Bangladeshi territory,” said Rubel Hossen, a resident of the area.
“Local residents alerted the Bangladesh border guards, and after the forces arrived, the group retreated and took up position on an embankment in no man’s land.”
Rubel said the stranded group endured severe lightning and heavy rain on the first night and received only limited food assistance from the BSF on the second day, the HRW reported.
“What I witnessed appeared to be a war-like standoff with large deployments of BSF and BGB,” Rubel told the HRW.
“Repeated flag meetings between the two forces failed, until the BSF finally escorted the group back to the Indian side.”
At dawn on June 6, Indian border guards allegedly pushed six members of two Bengali Muslim families, including three men, two women and a child, towards the Tetulbaria border, the statement mentioned.
While Bangladeshi border guards prevented them from entering Bangladesh, Indian personnel allegedly stopped them from returning, leaving the families stranded overnight before allowing them back into India, it added.
On June 8, BGB said the BSF took back 11 people, including a pregnant woman and her child, after they had remained stranded for nearly 48 hours at the zero line in Thakurgaon.
HRW said a controversial voter list revision conducted ahead of the March elections in West Bengal removed more than nine million names, triggering fears of detention and deportation.
The rights group noted that a citizenship verification process in Assam in 2019 had left more than 1.9 million people stateless. It added that thousands of Bengali-speaking residents had since been detained, while some were expelled unlawfully.
The BJP chief minister in Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly described Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state as “illegal immigrants”.
According to HRW, Sarma recently said, “We take them to a convenient location near the border, and literally push them across the border. Now, such an atmosphere has been created in Assam that several illegal Bangladeshis have started going back on their own.”
Hasibur Islam, a union parishad member in Bangladesh’s Panchagarh Sadar, said he met a family from Siliguri in West Bengal who claimed to possess Aadhaar cards, India’s biometric identity document.
He said the family told him that police detained them after their names were removed from the revised voter list and later handed them over to border security personnel, who attempted to push them into Bangladesh.
“The oldest member of the family has voted four times,” he said. “This year, none of them were able to vote because their names had been dropped from the electoral rolls.”
The family was eventually allowed to return to India after spending three days stranded at the border.
The rights organisation said Indian authorities maintain that many Bangladeshis are living in India illegally and have offered assistance for voluntary return. Voluntary repatriation can be compatible with international human rights standards but argued that authorities should neither coerce people into leaving nor forcibly expel them.
The organisation also cited allegations that some people were stripped of identity documents, money and personal belongings before being removed.
According to HRW, authorities in West Bengal have arbitrarily detained hundreds of alleged irregular Bangladeshi migrants in holding centres.
An Indian activist told the rights organisation that around 400 people are detained in facilities near the border and that many were detained after being excluded from voter rolls.
“The exclusion from the rolls has become a trigger for arrest, detention and expulsion and a source of pervasive fear,” the activist said.
Bangladesh has repeatedly said it will not accept people pushed across the border outside legal channels and that any return must follow established verification and repatriation procedures.
HRW said India is obligated under international human rights law to protect individuals from discrimination and arbitrary deprivation of citizenship.
The organisation said detention and expulsion without due process violate fundamental rights and warned that leaving people without food, water, shelter or medical care could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
It called on India to ensure access to legal representation, provide information on grounds for deportation, and allow those facing expulsion to appeal decisions.
HRW also said expelling or stranding children violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects children’s right to nationality and freedom from arbitrary detention.
“No one, whatever their nationality, should be left to spend nights in an open field between two lines of armed border guards,” Meenakshi said.
“India should end these brutal expulsions, and both governments should ensure that border management never again comes at the cost of basic human dignity.”