SIR pushes Bangladesh citizens back home

Fear of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has led hordes of illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators to flock to various entry points along the India-Bangladesh border for the past several weeks, to find ways to flee back home. 

While many hundreds have been ‘arrested’ by the Border Security Force (BSF) before being handed over to the Border Guards Bangladesh, many more hundreds are presently camping at the Hakimpur border near Swarup Nagar in North 24 Parganas, awaiting a successful pushback. 

Meet Rokaya Biwi of Rajshahi in Bangladesh. Working as domestic help in the posh New Town area of Kolkata for the past eight years, she has been one of those thousands of infiltrators who had entered India through local touts before fanning out all over Bengal and the rest of the country, settling here permanently for years. She not only acquired her voter, ration and Aadhar cards but also enjoyed the benefits of various state government schemes like “Laxmir Bhandar” ( Rs 1000 per month) apart from free rations. 

“I came in 2016, got my ration card and Aadhar card too, and have been the beneficiary of Laxmir Bhandar for the past two years. We came here, as we have no earnings in my own country,” she said. But what makes her return to Bangladesh? She says, “They are saying that after SIR, or whatever that is in process, we will be arrested and jailed. It is better to go back than to be in jail.”

Zulfikar Bhai, a blind man from Satkhira district across the border, made his living as a rag-picker and, with a good voice, also part-timed as a singer in suburban trains. “I know it is wrong to enter any other country illegally. I also know that India has the right to arrest me or deport me, but our hungry belly brought us here. Now, because of SIR, we will have to go back home,” he says, adding, “bhadroloker moto firey jaoa bhalo. Nahole lathi kheye jete hobe … tai esechi (it is better to return like a gentleman, or else you will be kicked out).” 

Like Rokaya and Zulfikar, several thousand infiltrators have returned to Bangladesh in the past three weeks or so after the SIR whip was cracked by the Election Commission of India. Most of these people are being officially pushed back via the North 24 Parganas and Malda borders, though there are reports of many others silently slipping back to their country through the Nadia and Murshidabad borders. “Scores of people are being pushed back every day. As the number of squatters is increasing. We were forced to pick them up in trucks and take them to the border gate. Thereafter, taking their biometric details and checking their criminal records, we are handing them over to the BGB,” said a BSF official, adding that the flow of the returning infiltrators was increasing by the day. 

“Though some people are claiming that 500 or 1000 people are sitting here. It is not so. It could be 200-300. But because every day several scores of people are being pushed back, the total number may have gone beyond a thousand from this border alone,” the official at Hakimpur said.

Hundreds have been arrested by the BSF before being handed over to the Border Guards of Bangladesh. As the process picks up the pace, the numbers are likely to grow manyfold in the coming days.