BJP lawmaker calls Muslim migrant workers ‘terrorists’
BJP parliamentarian Brij Lal accused of inciting Islamophobia after claiming sanitation workers from Assam were “Bangladeshi infiltrators” linked to terrorist
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — A ruling party lawmaker and former top police official has triggered outrage in India after publicly accusing a group of Muslim sanitation workers of being “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and “terrorists,” marking the latest in a series of Islamophobic outbursts by leaders aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In a video uploaded to his Facebook page last week, Brij Lal, a member of upper house of parliament and former director general of police (DGP) in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, was seen stopping five street cleaners in Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar Extension.
The men, holding brooms and wearing municipal uniforms, told Lal they were daily-wage workers from villages in Assam — an Indian state bordering Bangladesh.
Lal dismissed their answers, calling them “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and claiming, “They have come with the dream of Ghazwa-e-Hind,” an extremist conspiracy trope often invoked by Hindu nationalist leaders to paint Muslims as part of a plot to turn India into an Islamic nation. He alleged that “allowing such people to live among citizens gives Pakistan’s ISI an opportunity to spread terrorism.”
The 71-year-old lawmaker — who founded Uttar Pradesh’s Anti-Terrorism Squad during his police career — later defended his remarks, saying, “I know how terrorism works.” He urged Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, another BJP leader, to deport the workers, describing them as “a threat to national security.”
Indian media later confirmed that the five men were Indian citizens from Assam, temporarily hired as sanitation workers for the Diwali festival, earning about 300 Indian rupees ($3.40) a day. Rights groups and opposition leaders condemned Lal’s actions as harassment and racial profiling, warning that such rhetoric fuels vigilante violence against poor Muslim workers and migrants.
Apoorvanand, professor at Delhi University, said Lal’s behaviour reflected “the mainstreaming of hate” in India. “He is no fringe element. He was once the state’s police chief and is now a lawmaker. This shows how normalized anti-Muslim hostility has become.”
Opposition leaders from the Congress Party and Trinamool Congress accused the BJP of turning “infiltrator” rhetoric into an electoral strategy that criminalizes Indian Muslims under the guise of national security. Congress councillor Mukesh Chauhan noted that Lal “never found infiltrators when he was DGP — only after BJP came to power did he begin seeing them everywhere.”
Analysts say the incident underscores how the language of counterterrorism has been repurposed by Hindu nationalist leaders to target marginalized Muslim communities — particularly migrant workers from eastern India.
The repeated invocation of “Bangladeshi” identity, they argue, has become shorthand for questioning citizenship, faith, and belonging in Modi’s India.
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