By Arshad Ahmed
Mehbub Sheikh has been bedridden, barely able to talk and walk, since his return from the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.
“He was brutally beaten by the BSF to the extent that they thought he died and threw him across the fence on the Bangladesh side,” Mujibur Sheikh, his brother, told Maktoob.
On June 16, the West Bengal police dropped him off at his home in Hossain Nagar village in the state’s Murshidabad district. Two days ago, on June 14, the Border Security Force (BSF), which patrols India’s border with Bangladesh, spanning across 2,216 km with West Bengal, allegedly forcibly pushed him across the fence in North Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur.
In total, seven people, including Mehbub, who are migrant workers mostly from Murshidabad district, were forcibly pushed across to Bangladesh territories on June 14 by the BSF, according to Samirul Islam, the Chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board.
The seven who had been working in Mumbai and Thane were previously arrested by the Maharashtra police between June 9 and June 10, on suspicion of being illegal Bangladeshis, Islam said.
He added, “The seven people, all working in Maharashtra, were finally brought back between June 16 and June 17, after the top leadership, including the Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, intervened and pressured the BSF to bring them back.”
Speaking to Maktoob, three of the returnees — Mehbub Sheikh, Nizamuddin Sheikh and Minarul Sheikh — said on June 13, they were taken to a military base in Maharashtra’s Pune and then flown to airbases on the periphery of Bangladesh in eastern and northeastern India, specifically in the cities of Siliguri and Agartala.
Each flight carried close to 160 Bengali-speaking migrants, before BSF forcibly pushed them across the international border with Bangladesh along North Bengal, they added.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.