By Joydeep Sarkar
Hariharpara/Kolkata (Bengal): Nazimuddin Mondal can barely stand now. He winces as he tries to sit up at his home in Hariharpara of Bengal’s Murshidabad. His voice trembles slightly as he recounts his ordeal from early June.
“All I remember is that we were picked up by men from the Kanakia police station [in Mumbai] and then put on a flight to Agartala under tight security,” said Mondal. Thirty-four-year-old Mondal had been among the several from his village who had gone to Maharashtra to seek a livelihood.
Mondal says he was picked up by law enforcement from Mumbai on June 10, but that he lost track of dates after that. “It was a blur. I remember that couple from Bagda were on the same plane to Agartala in which I was and they were in tears,” he says. The Wire was later able to confirm their identities.
In Agartala, Mondal alleges that members of the Border Security Forces beat him and the others very badly. “I still haven’t recovered. My body aches. I feel pain standing up. My waist and legs hurt. They strip-searched us and beat us up. And then, one night, the BSF dumped us in Bangladesh,” Mondal says. He says that he was a part of a group of four men who were taken to a marshy land on the India-Bangladesh border and abandoned there.
The Wire was not able to get a comment from the BSF on its officers’ alleged mistreatment of those held.
The Border Guard Bangladesh (BDR) discovered them, Mondal says. “BDR officers shocked by our condition and the clarity with which we described our Indian homes,” he says. The BDR contacted the Mekhliganj Police Station in the Cooch Behar district in Bengal. Police then brought Mondal and the others back to India.
The news that four Indian men, including Mondal, were “returned” from Bangladesh made headlines across the country.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.