Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that Indian authorities are forcibly expelling ethnic Bengali residents, mostly Muslims from West Bengal state, to Bangladesh without basic due process.
Indian Border Security Force (BSF) actions, combined with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) efforts to block those expelled from entering, has left dozens of families stranded at the “zero line” between the two countries, HRW said in a report on Tuesday.
Bangladeshi border guards have reported that since June 1, 2026, they have foiled 21 attempts by the BSF to push more than 200 people, including children, into Bangladesh’s border districts.
The chief minister of India’s West Bengal state, Suvendu Adhikari, who took office after the Hindu-majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the March elections, said that the government under his “detect, delete and deport” policy had detained hundreds of “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and forced nearly 5,000 people “to go back.”
“Indian authorities are cruelly dumping families into Bangladesh or leaving them stranded at the border, ignoring their basic human rights,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should stop unlawfully expelling people, ensure procedural safeguards, engage with Bangladeshi authorities to verify citizenship, and end this dismaying animosity toward Muslims.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine people who witnessed Indian border security troops bring groups of people to the border at night and push them through cuts in the barbed wire fencing into Bangladeshi territory. In several cases, Indian border guards eventually allowed people to return after the Bangladesh border force denied them entry.
In Panchagarh, a northern district of Bangladesh, witnesses described a 75-hour standoff after the BSF attempted to push 10 people, including children, into Bangladesh on June 5. “The group had advanced approximately 50 feet inside Bangladeshi territory,” said Rubel Hossen, 35, a Bangladeshi villager. “Local residents alerted the Bangladesh border guards, and after the forces arrived, the group retreated and took up position on an embankment in no man’s land.”
On the first night, Hossen said, the stranded group was exposed to severe lightning and heavy rain. The Indian border guards only supplied some dry food on the second day. “What I witnessed appeared to be a war-like standoff with large deployments of BSF and BGB,” Hossen said. “Repeated flag meetings [localized negotiations at the border to defuse tensions] between the two forces failed, until the BSF finally escorted the group back to the Indian side.”
At dawn on June 6, Indian border guards pushed six members of two Bengali Muslim families�"including three men, two women, and a child�"toward the Tetulbaria border in Bangladesh. While the Bangladeshi border guards stopped them from entering, the Indian border guards prevented them from returning to India, leaving the families stranded. After the families spent the night in the open, the Indians allowed them to return.
On June 8, the Bangladeshi border guards said that the BSF took back 11 people, including a pregnant mother and her child, after they were stranded for nearly 48 hours at the “zero line”�"the narrow “no man’s land” along both sides of the border�"in Thakurgaon district.
Just ahead of March elections in West Bengal, India’s election commission had carried out a hurried and controversial revision of voter lists that dropped over nine million names, triggering threats of detention and deportation. A flawed and discriminatory citizenship verification process in Assam state in 2019 had already left over 1.9 million people stateless and thousands of Bengali-speaking residents of the state have been held in detention centers, while many were expelled unlawfully.
The BJP chief minister in Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has repeatedly lashed out at Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state, calling them “illegal immigrants.” Recently he said: “We take them to a convenient location near the border, and literally push them across the border. Now, such an atmosphere has been created in Assam that several illegal Bangladeshis have started going back on their own.”
Hasibur Islam, a union council member from Panchagarh Sadar in Bangladesh, said that he had met a family from Siliguri, West Bengal state, who said they had Aadhaar cards, India’s biometric identity document. But since they were not included in the revised voter list, the police had detained them and handed them to border security, who attempted to push them into Bangladesh. “The oldest member of the family has voted four times,” he said. “This year, none of them were able to vote�"their names had been dropped from the electoral rolls.” The family was allowed to return to India after being stranded at the border for three days.
Indian officials contend that numerous Bangladeshis are living in India illegally and have offered to help them return voluntarily. Genuinely voluntary repatriation, including with assistance, is compatible with international human rights standards, but India should not coerce repatriation or forcibly expel people, Human Rights Watch said. Nor should they, as some of those interviewed allege, strip them of documentation, money, and personal belongings.
West Bengal authorities have arbitrarily detained hundreds of alleged irregular Bangladeshi immigrants in holding centers. While most of them are Muslim, some are Hindu. “An estimated 400 people are detained in holding centers at the West Bengal border areas,” an Indian activist said, adding that many were detained after they were dropped from voter lists. He said that the “exclusion from the rolls has become a trigger for arrest, detention, and expulsion and a source of pervasive fear.”
Bangladeshi authorities have said they will not accept people pushed across the border outside legal channels, insisting that any returns must follow proper verification and established repatriation procedures.
India is obligated under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to ensure the protection of everyone’s rights and to prevent deprivation of citizenship on the basis of race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin. India’s detention and expulsion of anyone without due process violates fundamental human rights, Human Rights Watch said. Leaving people without food, water, shelter, or medical care may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
The Indian government should ensure access to fundamental procedural safeguards for anyone subject to expulsion. This includes access to full information about the grounds for deportation, the right to legal representation, and an opportunity to appeal a decision to expel them. Expelling or stranding children violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obligates states to respect children’s right to preserve their nationality and prohibits their arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
India and Bangladesh have bilateral mechanisms that provide for verification of nationality and orderly transfer of nationals. Indian authorities’ circumvention of these procedures has repeatedly left people trapped between two border forces in conditions that violate their fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said.
“No one, whatever their nationality, should be left to spend nights in an open field between two lines of armed border guards,” Ganguly said. “India should end these brutal expulsions, and both governments should ensure that border management never again comes at the cost of basic human dignity.”
