May 23 started like any other Friday for Khairul Islam. In the afternoon, he visited the police station for his weekly signature in the register — a trip he has been making at least since 2020 when he was released on bail from a “foreigners’ detention camp” in Assam.
Around 11:30 p.m., he woke up to an unusual knock on the door of his small house in Morigaon district. “It was the border police,” he said.
Within days, Mr. Islam found himself in the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh. He said his hands and eyes were tied with gamchas (traditional towel) as he was transported to Bangladesh, with no opportunity to even make a phone call until he was already across the border.
A government schoolteacher, Mr. Islam, 52, lives with his wife and children in the Mikirbheta police station area. He has been teaching Classes 1 to 5 at the Thangshali Khandapukuri LP primary school since 1996. In 2016, he was declared a foreigner by a tribunal and spent a couple of years appealing his case. With the Gauhati High Court having turned down his appeal and his case pending in the Supreme Court, he has been reporting at the local police station every week.
However, little did he expect that he would be among thousands of “undocumented migrants” that India had been “pushing back” into Bangladesh. The “pushback” exercise had begun after the Union Home Ministry asked police across the country to identify Bangladeshis who had illegally entered India and were living on forged documents.
The Home Ministry’s direction, which came in the wake of the regime change in Bangladesh last year, gained fresh urgency after the Pahalgam terror attack in April, with data reported by The Hindu showing that about 2,500 people had been “pushed back” by the end of June.
“I remember being scared,” Mr. Islam says of his journey across the border in a “large vehicle”. “I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear.” There were at least a dozen people in the vehicle along with him, he said. “It was horrific. They were all shouting. Some were asking for water, some screamed that they wanted to relieve themselves. The officials told us to urinate in the vehicle and handed us plastic bags.”
“Throughout the journey I kept reasoning with them that I am an Indian citizen but they would not listen,” Mr. Islam said. “I never thought I would be thrown out of my own country,” he told The Hindu, adding all were handed about 200 to 300 takas (Bangladeshi currency) before being deboarded.
Mr. Islam said the group crossed the no man’s land and met locals, who informed security officials in Bangladesh. After spending about a day with the officials, Mr. Islam said the group started making its way back to India. “But suddenly, we started hearing gunshots from the Indian side. They were firing rubber pellets at us. A few more hours later, we realised that India was now asking Bangladesh for proof that we were Indians.”
It was after this that Mr. Islam got the chance to make a phone call for the first time. “The Bangladeshi officers asked us to call home, get documents if we had, and arranged to have it sent over. After that, all I remember was being ferried from one place to another until I got home. When I reached home, I found out that my wife had to file an application for my return to the district Superintendent of Police office as well,” he said, adding he was the only one in his batch to return.
“The moment I was brought back, I was taken to the SP office. All he could say was, ‘This was a mistake. Please don’t think too much of it and don’t feel too bad’,” Mr. Islam recalled. As he tries to recover from the trauma, he says painful memories of his journey across the border still flash in his mind.
Rahima Begum, 50, was taken away from her home in Golaghat district on the eastern border of the State, during the same week as Mr. Islam. And like him, Ms. Rahima too was among the several Indians caught in the police crackdown on illegal immigrants.
In a matter of days, Ms. Rahima was crawling across paddy fields under the midnight sky in the no man’s land, with about 22 fresh stitches on her abdomen from a kidney-stone related surgery she had undergone days before. She was too scared to walk. Ms. Begum is now in a “serious condition” at the Diphu Medical College Hospital in Assam, her husband Malekuddin Chowdhury said. “After she returned, we saw that many of the 22 stitches had come apart.”
A daily wage labourer all his life, Mr. Chowdhury has not been working for a few years now since he lost his sight partially. His teenage sons now support the family with their daily wages. As Ms. Rahima recovers in the hospital, Mr. Chowdhury said he was running out of things to sell for her treatment. “Whatever livestock we had… ducks, chicken, goats… we sold it all.”
Ms. Rahima’s husband recalled that she left behind her post-surgery medication and about ₹3,000 in cash that her family members had handed over to her. He too said she was given Bangladeshi currency at the border post. However, while Ms. Rahima said she faced hostility from the security forces in Bangladesh, Mr. Islam said they were nice enough to let him make a phone call and prove that he was Indian. However, Ms. Rahima too said that her return to India did not look possible until the Bangladesh security officials had been alerted. “We did not know what was happening. One day, we got a call from local police in Assam that we had to pick her up from there,” her husband said.
Mr. Islam returned home to his wife and children days before Eid in June. “I am still scared. I don’t know what will happen going forward,” he said.
Published – July 25, 2025 09:37 pm IST
