Conditions in West Bengal’s Muslim Detention Camps Worse Than in Assam

Asarul Sheikh was returning home from Kerala in the last week of August. But police picked him up from an area near a railway station in his home district of Murshidabad, West Bengal. The migrant worker from Murshidabad was accused of being a Bangladeshi national and taken to the Lalgola detention centre, located 15 kilometres away, according to his niece, Rozina Khatun.

A previous report by Scroll said that since June, West Bengal Police had carried out late-night raids and picked up at least nine Muslim men and two children. They were accused of being Bangladeshi nationals. The police did not explain the basis for taking action against these people. They did not even file any official complaint or First Information Report (FIR). The alleged illegal foreigners were given no opportunity to respond to the police allegations or prove their citizenship.

“More than 20 days have passed since Mr. Asarul was detained, but the police have not given us any document or notice explaining why they suspect him of being Bangladeshi,” Ms. Rozina told Scroll. Mr. Asarul’s niece also said that his name had recently been included as a valid voter in West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He had also voted in the recently concluded Assembly election. “But they refused even to look at our documents,” she said. The names of four other people detained since June had also been approved through West Bengal’s SIR process.

Identify, Delete Names and Deport

Soon after the BJP came to power in May, the West Bengal government announced plans to establish “holding centres” or detention centres for alleged illegal immigrants. The centres are part of its policy to “identify, delete and deport” them. The policy is similar to Assam’s system for determining citizenship, which has often been criticised as arbitrary and biased against marginalised communities.

More worrying, researchers and legal experts have pointed out that the “foreigner identification process” being used by the West Bengal government is even more harsh and strict than Assam’s. They say it gives the police and administration extensive powers without providing any form of judicial review.

Sanjay Hegde, a senior Supreme Court lawyer, said the process in Bengal allows the police to act as the judge, jury and executioner in determining citizenship. He added, “There is no judicial or quasi-judicial authority to review the question of identification or deportation in this process.” In Assam, at least, people accused of being foreigners are brought before Foreigners Tribunals, where their citizenship is examined under the Foreigners Act. In West Bengal, however, people picked up by the police are allegedly handed directly to the Border Security Force (BSF) and pushed into Bangladesh, or kept in detention centres for months.

Foreigners Tribunals are special quasi-judicial bodies in Assam that deal with cases related to citizenship.
Mr. Hegde said, “At least in Assam, people were sent to tribunals, where there was at least a nominal presence of the minimum rules of legal process.” However, Supreme Court lawyer Talha Abdul Rahman pointed to a different aspect. He said, “This does not mean that Foreigners Tribunals make the situation much better. Because in my view, the tribunals themselves are a kind of kangaroo court and fail to meet legal requirements.”

Scroll emailed the Director General of Police (DGP) of West Bengal seeking a response to the allegations of constitutional violations. The news organisation said the report would be updated if it receives a response. The May 2025 Directive In at least one of the nine cases reviewed by Scroll, West Bengal Police used an order issued by the Union Home Ministry on May 2, 2025, to detain a person.

The order directed all states and Union Territories to keep suspected illegal immigrants in “holding centres”. It also laid down a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) under which the authorities in the state and district claimed by the accused as their own were instructed to verify the person’s citizenship within 30 days. If the authorities failed to complete the verification within one month, the person could be returned or deported. The notification was issued last year after a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, in which 25 tourists were killed.

Police in BJP-ruled states used the order last year to forcibly deport Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers. As reported earlier by Scroll, in many cases, the police did not even wait for verification reports from the workers’ home districts before deporting them. The Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal had not followed the Union Home Ministry’s order. However, soon after the new BJP government came to power, authorities began picking up and detaining people.

One of the first people in West Bengal against whom the May 2025 order was used was Nasir Molla of Murshidabad district. On the afternoon of June 18, police personnel from the Jalangi police station in Murshidabad came to his home in Dayarampur village and forcibly took him away. Nasir Molla’s name was removed from the electoral roll during the recently concluded SIR. However, his appeal against the decision is pending before a tribunal.

His brother, Suman Molla, approached the Calcutta High Court. However, the High Court refused to release Mr. Nasir from the Lalgola detention centre. The court said Mr. Nasir had failed to prove his citizenship under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025. Mr. Molla’s lawyer, Mokaram Hossain, told Scroll that they had challenged the High Court order in the Supreme Court.

“how did the police reach the conclusion that he is a foreigner?” he asked. “Where is the evidence? This is not a case where he was caught illegally entering India at the border. He was arrested from his own home.” The family claims that Nasir Molla is an Indian citizen by birth and that land records belonging to their family have existed since the 1950s. Mr. Hossain referred to the landmark 2024 Rahim Ali case, in which the Supreme Court clearly held that when a person is accused of being a foreigner, the information on which the allegation is based must be shared with that person in accordance with the principles of natural justice. Mr. Hossain said, “No such documents have been provided to Molla or his family.”

In another detention case, the Calcutta High Court raised similar questions about the role of the police. On September 19, a bench headed by Justice Saugata Bhattacharya directed the police to file an affidavit explaining why 39-year-old Shahidul Sheikh was picked up from his home in Murshidabad. The court directed the Superintendent of Police (SP) to submit a report on the steps taken by the state from the time Mr. Sheikh was detained until August 8. The judge said, “Thousands of people crossed the border in the 1970s and 1980s. Will you start taking action against everyone like this? And in this manner? By violating human rights?”

Validity of the Order Under Challenge

Legal experts have also pointed out that the May 2025 directive itself violates several safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution. Recently, the son of a Bengali-speaking Muslim woman filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the notification. Mumbai Police had detained the woman earlier this year and pushed her into Bangladesh. The order does not mention any requirement to produce the accused before a magistrate. It also removed an earlier procedure under which police were required to verify the nationality of suspected illegal immigrants with the relevant high commission.

Dipesh Agarwala, a lawyer who has represented several citizenship cases before the Gauhati High Court, pointed out that even alleged foreign nationals are entitled to protection under Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution. He said they must be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of being taken into custody. Supreme Court lawyer Rahman said the SOP contained in the notification is completely arbitrary and illegal. “This SOP is actually tantamount to making people disappear without a trial,” Mr. Rahman told Scroll. “People are being picked up based on the discretion of a police officer and whom he considers to be a foreigner. There are no clear guidelines on how ‘illegally residing Bangladeshis or Myanmar nationals’ will be identified, which gives room for personal prejudice and bias instead of a judicial process.”

Another Supreme Court lawyer, Prasanna S., pointed to a fundamental contradiction. He said there is a serious inconsistency between the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, and the Home Ministry’s May order being used by police to carry out these summary detentions and forced deportations. The latter directive was issued under a statutory framework that was replaced or repealed four months later by the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, and the Immigration and Foreigners Order, 2025.

He said, “An administrative SOP can never override or cancel the legal safeguards contained in a statute. Therefore, in view of this legal framework, the principle of the order is liable to be struck down by a court.” Prasanna S. is representing Shahin Fakir, who challenged the legal validity of the May 2025 SOP on the deportation of illegal Bangladeshi nationals after his mother was detained and pushed into Bangladesh in June.

‘Against the Constitution’

Lawyer Rahman also questioned the process of seeking a report from the district collector of the area where the accused person lives. Under the notification, if the report is not received within 30 days for any reason, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) has been directed to deport the person. “This is completely arbitrary. It is unacceptable that an Indian citizen should be illegally ‘sent back’ to another country because of the failure of the state, when he has no connection with that country,” he said.

Gauhati High Court lawyer Agarwala noted that even if the police follow the May 2025 directive, the deportation process must still comply with the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025. “No one can be deported merely on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant,” he said. “Under the law, verification of nationality is mandatory before any deportation. The police cannot be both the judge and the executioner. This is completely against our constitutional framework.”