RAIPUR: Chhattisgarh Police have released 19 people who were detained in Bilaspur district on suspicion of being Bangladeshi infiltrators after verification of their documents established that they were Indian citizens.
The 19 were among 23 working-class residents detained by the Special Task Force in the Sirgitti area of Bilaspur on September 5 over suspicion arising from their dialects and addresses. They were subsequently taken to a holding facility at Raipur Central Jail.
Verification of records in their home districts in West Bengal, including Murshidabad, Malda and Jangipur, established their citizenship, sources said. Investigators checked voter lists, local administration records, family details and permanent residence documents.
Bilaspur Senior Superintendent of Police Rajnesh Singh confirmed that 19 people had been cleared and released following the verification.
“19 people have been cleared and released after verification. Further steps regarding the remaining four will depend on the reports we receive,” Singh said.
The four others remain in police custody as their records are being cross-verified. Police said discrepancies persisted regarding their permanent addresses and noted that their names had been struck off voter lists during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
The Chhattisgarh unit of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) criticised the detentions, alleging that the 23 people had been held without being given adequate opportunity to establish their citizenship through documents.
“Without serving any show cause notices and giving time to the suspected individuals to substantiate their document credentials, all 23 were detained by Bilaspur police on flimsy pretexts,” Shabnam Sengupta, Syed Sadiq Ali, Kamini and Asif Khan of the PUCL's Chhattisgarh unit said.
“The Bilaspur debacle underscores a growing, alarming pattern in anti-illegal immigration enforcement: sweeping up domestic migrants, manual labourers, and linguistic minorities on weak unconvincing grounds, holding them in confinement, and putting the burden of proof to demonstrate their right to exist in their own country,” they said.
Referring to the subsequent verification of records, the PUCL representatives said, “The aggressive stance collapsed once actual paperwork caught up with the enforcement drive.”
They said records from the detainees' home districts, including voter lists, local administration registers, family lineages and permanent residence records, had verified their status as Indian citizens.
