Four Rohingya arrested after entering India without papers
Arrests come as worsening economic conditions in Bangladesh's refugee camps push Rohingya toward risky journeys to India and across sea to Southeast Asia
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — Indian railway police have arrested four Rohingya refugees who allegedly entered the country without documents after leaving refugee camps in Bangladesh, highlighting the increasingly precarious journeys being undertaken by members of the persecuted community in search of livelihoods and greater economic security.
The two men and two women had lived in the Jamtoli and Kutupalong refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district since 2017 before crossing into India on Aug. 19, according to local media reports citing India’s Government Railway Police, or GRP.
Police identified them as Enamul Hossain, 23, Noor Kahima, 20, Enayet Ullah, 23, and Zainu Bibi, 21. Authorities alleged that a middleman helped the group board a train from Guwahati in northeastern India on Thursday, with the southern city of Vijayawada as their intended destination.
Acting on information about their journey, railway police intercepted the four at New Jalpaiguri railway station in the eastern state of West Bengal. They were subsequently arrested over their alleged undocumented entry and produced before a court in Jalpaiguri on Friday.
The arrests come against the backdrop of a wider movement of Rohingya out of Bangladesh, where more than one million refugees are living with severe restrictions on employment and movement and growing uncertainty over humanitarian assistance.
Many have spent years in sprawling camps around Cox’s Bazar after escaping successive waves of persecution in neighboring Burma, particularly the military’s 2017 crackdown that drove more than 700,000 Rohingya across the border.
With few opportunities to legally earn a living and conditions inside the camps deteriorating, some Rohingya have increasingly turned to smugglers and informal migration networks in attempts to reach India or Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
The desperation has increasingly pushed Rohingya toward dangerous migration routes. More than 6,500 attempted sea crossings across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in 2025, with nearly 900 reported dead or missing, according to the UN refugee agency.
That made 2025 the deadliest year on record for Rohingya maritime movements in South and Southeast Asia, with roughly one in seven of those attempting the journey dying or disappearing.
The journeys continued in 2026. More than 2,800 Rohingya had taken dangerous sea routes by mid-April, while hundreds more have since been feared dead or missing in major boat disasters. Many travel aboard overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels toward Malaysia and Indonesia, while others attempt undocumented land routes into countries such as India.
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