by Alishan Jafri and Shruti Sharma
Gurugram: On July 19, Hafizur Sheikh (41) had finished his shift as a cleaner outside a liquor store in Gurugram when he was stopped by policemen and interrogated. Sheikh answered all their questions, but then he was asked to produce his identity cards to “verify his citizenship”.
Despite having an Aadhaar card, a voter ID card and other identity documents on his phone, he was told that this was not enough. “The police wanted a physical copy,” his brother Amanur told The Wire. “My brother told them that he could bring the physical copy or they could accompany him to check the documents personally, but they did not listen and he was detained.”
Sheikh, from West Bengal’s Nadia district, is among hundreds of mostly Muslim migrants detained by the police in Haryana’s Gurugram. These men usually work as cleaners in Gurugram’s MNCs, ragpickers and public sanitation workers, or in some instances as domestic workers, and delivery agents.
On July 19, police detained at least 74 migrant workers – 11 from West Bengal and 63 from Assam – who they suspect are undocumented foreign nationals from neighbouring Bangladesh. They were taken to what the police are calling “holding centres” – that rights activists say are akin to detention camps. “This camp [in Sector 10, Gurugram],” said advocate and Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) member Supanta Sinha, “has over 200 detainees.”
On July 21, a two-member CPI-ML team visited one of the makeshift detention camps in Gurugram’s Sector 10 after they received “news of detention of scores of migrant workers purportedly for ascertaining their citizenship.” Sinha was a part of that team.
He alleged that the workers were being forced to live under inhumane conditions. A CPI-ML statement alleged that “similar exercises have been conducted in other parts of Gurgaon as well, with some zones housing over 200 detainees currently”.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.