SATKHIRA, May 12: A group of 78 'Bengali-speaking' people who were pushed across the border into Bangladesh by India's Border Security Force (BSF) and left on a shoal in Satkhira have described being subjected to 'inhumane treatment' until they were released near the western edge of the Sundarban.
Claiming they had travelled to Gujarat from Bangladesh for work at different times, they say local police detained them on April 26 and beat them up and treated them cruelly.
The group was rescued by the Forest Department from the Mandarbaria shoals in Shyamnagar Upazila and later handed over to the local police station by the Coast Guard.
On Sunday afternoon, the Coast Guard transported them from Mandarbaria to the Mongla Camp. That night, they were taken to Shyamnagar Police Station, where the handover took place in the presence of Shyamnagar Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Roni Khatun. At midnight, the Upazila administration and Shyamnagar Police Station took custody of those pushed in by the BSF.
Shyamnagar Police Station chief Humayun Kabir Mol said, "Seventy-eight people of different ages, pushed into Bangladesh by India, were rescued from Mandarbaria Char in the western Sundarbans. All of them were unwell. The local Upazila administration provided them with first aid and food that night."
The officer added that three of those rescued claimed to be Indian citizens by birth, born to Indian parents. "A case will be filed against the three under the Passport Act. The remaining 75 people have claimed to be Bangladeshis. Most of them are said to be from different parts of Narail, Khulna, Dhaka and Satkhira districts."
Those claiming to be Bangladeshis have been kept in the Upazila Muktijoddha Complex and the remaining three in Shyamnagar Police Station, according to Humayun.
On April 27, the Gujarat police said as many as 1,024 Bangladeshis, including women and children, had been arrested during a crackdown in Ahmedabad and Surat, the Hindustan Times reported.
Addressing a press conference in Ahmedabad the following day, the state's police chief Vikas Sahay said a total of 890 Bangladeshi nationals were detained in Ahmedabad, while 134 were detained in Surat within a single night during the operation conducted under the guidance of the state's Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel.
Since then, a string of incidents involving the BSF pushing people into Bangladesh across several border areas has been reported. The 78 people in Shyamnagar were reportedly forced across the border by the BSF in a similar incident.
Rauf Sheikh, 76, son of Khoshal Sheikh of Bishnupur village in Narail, Sheikh Shawkat, 45, son of Mandar Sheikh of Babupur village, and Mohammad Imran, 56, son of Amzed Bepari from Khulna's Daulatpur Upazila, shared their harrowing experiences.
Rauf, Shawkat and Imran said that they all had been living in the slums of Surat and working low-income jobs. On April 26, the local administration tore down their shanties and arrested them.
They were then brought to a police camp, handcuffed and blindfolded, and held for four days before being flown to Kolkata.
A ship from there took them to Mandarbaria on the shores of the Bay of Bengal on May 9, where they were released in a shoal while blindfolded. Later, they walked to the Mandarbaria jungle camp of the Forest Department.
