Bengali-speaking Muslims targeted in India’s immigration crackdown
Rights groups say Bengaluru police treated language and Muslim identity as grounds for suspicion during drive ostensibly targeting undocumented immigrants
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — Bengali-speaking Muslims were disproportionately rounded up, detained and forced to prove their Indian citizenship during an immigration crackdown in southern India, according to a new fact-finding report that accuses police of turning a drive against undocumented foreigners into identity-based profiling.
The report, “Profiling as Policy,” was released by a coalition including the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice and workers’ rights groups after Bengaluru police launched a citywide “verification” operation on August 8.
It found that those targeted were overwhelmingly poor Bengali-speaking migrant workers, predominantly Muslims from the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam.
Police entered migrant settlements and working-class neighborhoods across Bengaluru, reportedly taking hundreds of residents away for questioning for up to 12 hours. Waste collectors, construction laborers, street vendors, auto-rickshaw drivers, delivery workers and domestic workers were among those targeted.
Many residents produced Aadhaar identification, voter cards, tax identification and other Indian documents but were still taken for verification, the report said. Women, children and elderly residents were also among those rounded up.
Rights groups said the operation effectively treated speaking Bengali — a major Indian language spoken by tens of millions of citizens — as grounds for suspicion that someone might be an undocumented migrant from neighboring Bangladesh.
“A ‘Bangladeshi identification drive’ cannot become a Bengali identification drive,” the report said, arguing that language cannot substitute for evidence of foreign citizenship.
The groups also identified both religious and class-based patterns. While most people targeted were Muslims, a smaller number were Dalits from Bengali-speaking communities.
Poor migrants living in informal settlements faced raids while Bengali-speaking professionals living in apartment complexes or working in Bengaluru’s large technology sector were apparently not subjected to comparable mass checks.
Some residents also accused police of violence. A 60-year-old man identified as Sharif told investigators he was repeatedly struck with a police baton, while another worker showed injuries he attributed to police beatings.
Police figures indicate the operation was extensive. One senior officer said 1,909 people had been verified and 15 Bangladeshis identified, while Bengaluru Police Commissioner Seemanth Kumar later said 2,900 people had been checked and 105 detained as suspected foreign nationals. Another account cited in the report put the number questioned at 2,944 during 91 raids.
The crackdown comes amid a broader push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government to identify and deport people suspected of entering India illegally from Bangladesh and Burma. A federal Home Ministry directive issued in May 2025 instructed states to establish special teams for detection and deportation.
But the rights groups argued that immigration enforcement does not permit authorities to presume foreign nationality from language, religion, poverty, occupation or residence in an informal settlement.
They cited a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that authorities need some evidentiary basis before treating a person as a suspected foreigner, rather than arbitrarily selecting people for investigation.
Concerns over such drives have intensified after Indian citizens were previously caught in deportation operations. In one prominent case, Sunali Khatun, her eight-year-old son and four others were deported to Bangladesh in 2025 before courts intervened to facilitate their return.
The coalition demanded an immediate end to profiling of Bengali-speaking migrant communities, an independent investigation into allegations of assault and unlawful detention, and publication of the legal procedures governing immigration checks.
“The State may enforce immigration law,” the report concluded, “but cannot enforce prejudice as immigration law.”
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