In just about a month since the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 that killed 26 people, Delhi Police has, in a concerted capital-wide drive, identified 470 people as illegal Bangladeshi migrants and another 50 as foreigners who have overstayed, air-lifted them from Hindon air base to Agartala in Tripura, and deported them via the land border to Bangladesh.
A Delhi Police officer said the Union Ministry of Home Affairs had directed them late last year to undertake a verification exercise to identify and detain illegal Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya.
Between November 15, 2024, and April 20, 2025, around 220 illegal migrants and 30 overstaying foreigners were caught by Delhi Police, data available with the MHA shows. They were handed over to the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO), taken by rail and road to eastern states, and sent to Bangladesh via land borders.
But after Pahalgam, there has been some urgency. “Over the last one month, around 3-4 special flights went from the Hindon air base in Ghaziabad to Agartala to drop all illegal migrants,” a police officer said. Cumulatively, over the last six months, about 700 illegals have been sent back to Bangladesh, he said.
Initially, directions were given to Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs) of all 15 districts to conduct verification drives and detain illegal Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya. “Then, a team of the first battalion of Delhi Police and FRRO officials travelled via trains taking the detained illegal migrants to West Bengal. They then took the bus and handed over all illegal migrants to the Border Security Force (BSF), and finally deported them to Bangladesh,” a source aware of the operations said.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
