Three Indians were among a group of 78 people “pushed” across the water into Bangladesh on May 8, alleged a report by the police in Bangladesh’s Satkhira town.
The 78 persons had been rescued from the Mandarbaria area of the Sundarbans in Satkhira by Bangladeshi forest department officials and the coast guard, said Humayun Kabir, the officer in-charge of the Shyamnagar police station in Bangladesh, who filed the report on Monday.
The report said the three purported Indians among them were arrested for entering Bangladesh without documents. They were identified as 20-year-old Abdur Rahman, 24-year-old Muhammad Hasan Shah and 19-year-old Saiful Sheikh.
They are from Nehrunagar in Gujarat, the report claimed.
A case was registered against them in Bangladesh under section 4 of the 1952 Control of Entry Act.
Scroll contacted India’s Ministry of External Affairs and a response is awaited.
The police in Gujarat, from where the men were allegedly detained, rejected allegations that the group had been pushed into the water.
Sharad Singhal, the joint commissioner of police (crime) for Ahmedabad city, told Scroll that the correct procedure has always been followed.
“In fact, we have handed 31 Bangladeshis in January to Bangladesh authorities and 46 in April,” Singhal said. “[The allegation] is not correct and totally false one that they have been dropped.”
Kabir, the Bangladeshi police officer in-charge, said that the 75 Bangladeshis had been sent to their relatives on Monday and Tuesday.
The Bangladeshi police report says that on April 26 at about 4 am, Ahmedabad’s Chandola area was the site of a raid by Gujarat Police personnel. They included some in plain clothes from the crime branch.
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