By Team
(London) – Indian authorities are forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali residents, mostly Muslims from West Bengal state, to Bangladesh without basic due process, Human Rights Watch said today. Indian Border Security Force (BSF) actions, combined with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) efforts to block those expelled from entering, has left dozens of families stranded at the “zero line” between the two countries.
Bangladeshi border guards have reported that since June 1, 2026, they have foiled 21 attempts by the BSF to push more than 200 people, including children, into Bangladesh’s border districts. The chief minister of India’s West Bengal state, Suvendu Adhikari, who took office after the Hindu-majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the March elections, said that the government under his “detect, delete and deport” policy had detained hundreds of “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 Human Rights Watch. “The government should stop unlawfully expelling people, ensure procedural safeguards, engage with Bangladeshi authorities to verify citizenship, and end this dismaying animosity toward Muslims.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine people who witnessed Indian border security troops bring groups of people to the border at night and push them through cuts in the barbed wire fencing into Bangladeshi territory. In several cases, Indian border guards eventually allowed people to return after the Bangladesh border force denied them entry.
In Panchagarh, a northern district of Bangladesh, witnesses 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, 35, a Bangladeshi villager. “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.”
On the first night, Hossen said, the stranded group was exposed to severe lightning and heavy rain. The Indian border guards only supplied some dry food on the second day. “What I witnessed appeared to be a war-like standoff with large deployments of BSF and BGB,” Hossen said. “Repeated flag meetings [localized negotiations at the border to defuse tensions] 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 pushed six members of two Bengali Muslim families—including three men, two women, and a child—toward the Tetulbaria border in Bangladesh. While the Bangladeshi border guards stopped them from entering, the Indian border guards prevented them from returning to India, leaving the families stranded. After the families spent the night in the open, the Indians allowed them to return.
This story was originally published in hrw.org. Read the full story here.