On 23 December 2025, in Kaushambi, Ghaziabad, Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel and some police officers entered a cluster of shanties. They asked the residents:
“Are you Bangladeshi? Put the machine on your back. The machine is showing you as Bangladeshi.”
There is currently an ongoing campaign to find illegal Bangladeshi nationals, Rohingya refugees, and undocumented citizens. Operations like Operation Torch or Operation Intruder have been launched, with police visiting slums to identify alleged illegal residents. The impact, however, is being felt even by India’s own citizens.
Across Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, Muslims from Assam are being viewed with suspicion, and Bengali-speaking people are being accused of being Bangladeshis.
Were Bangladeshis Really Found?
After a video of the 23 December incident went viral, The Quint team visited Ghaziabad’s Kaushambi and Bohapur areas, where the police search had taken place. There we met Roshni Khatun, who appears in the video.
Roshni, originally from Araria district in Bihar, has lived in the area for 14–15 years. She said police asked her family for her IDs and mockingly called her a Bangladeshi, spreading fear in the entire settlement. She added that the police themselves shot and circulated the video and they didn’t even know what was happening.
This story was originally published in thequint.com. Read the full story here.