“We spent a night at a detention camp. Somehow, through the intervention of our state’s police, we were released. I will never go to work in Assam again. I have worked in different parts of India but never faced such a situation.”
Sahbaz Hashmi (35), from Kuligram in Murshidabad, is among a large number of migrant workers from Bengal who have returned home after being detained by authorities in Gujarat and Assam, and allegedly harassed by local residents in Odisha, amid a crackdown on illegal Bangladeshis.
So much so, that top officials in the West Bengal government and police have now reached out to their counterparts for help. “There have been many such cases where migrant workers of Bengal are being targeted in different states. Officers in the police and administrative levels of the state government have spoken with their counterparts in other states,” Samirul Islam, chairman of the state’s migrant welfare board, told The Indian Express.
Adding to the mounting fear, seven persons from the state were detained by Mumbai Police and pushed into Bangladesh by the BSF on June 14. They included four youths from Murshidabad, one from Purba Bardhaman and a married couple from North 24 Parganas. All of them were brought back to India following the intervention of the Bengal government.
“Whenever such a case has been brought to our notice, the state administration and police have helped in the release of such detainees. In one such incident in Assam, I personally called the SP there,” said Islam, who is also a TMC Rajya Sabha MP.
Islam has also written a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, “highlighting how our migrants are being targeted not only by mobs but also by police in different states, only because they speak Bengali”. Similar letters have been sent by TMC MP Yusuf Pathan and Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury to the chief ministers of Gujarat and Odisha.
“The welfare board already has a helpline number for anyone who is facing problems in other states,” Islam said, adding that its portal has about 22 lakh registered migrant workers in all. “We are also trying to provide jobs to many of those who have returned through state schemes like Pathashree (road construction),” he said.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.