Haunted By The Midnight Knock

IT started as one man's horror. But is now being seen as a medieval pogrom against an entire community. The dreaded knock on Basiruddin's door came at about 3 am on July 13. The shack in Bangalipura, a northeast Mumbai suburb, which the 22-year-old zari worker was sharing with four others, had armed policemen as visitors. The inhabitants were manhandled and bundled into a van even as the cops badmouthed Bangladeshis.

Basiruddin, originally from Uluberia in Howrah, is as Indian as any Mumbaikar. And can prove it. But it didn't help. "They tore our voter's identity card, my school certificates, other records issued by the West Bengal government, and herded us like animals into the van. Scared, we held our peace even in the face of racial abuses and threats accompanied by brutal kicks and digs with gun butts," he recalls, shocked.

Basiruddin and his friends were kept in custody for 11 days on a diet of soggy rice and bits of bread. At Victoria Terminus police station, he and 31 others were repeatedly stripped—as their interrogators sought to ascertain their religion which they had never denied. Finally, they were chained together and put on the Kurla Express under heavy police guard. To doubly ensure no one escaped, they were chained to the windows.

Basiruddin's horrific tale perhaps best illustrates the treatment that looms if one is poor, and a Bengali-speaking Muslim. The city does have an illegal Bangladeshi population, but the mode of identifying the foreigners has turned arbitrary and inhumane. And with the Maharashtra regime as well as the government at the Centre supporting the operation weed-out, there is enough reason to believe that the police will continue to spread terror. And many Basiruddins could end up wrongly deported across the border.

Bangladeshis have been deported from Mumbai since 1982 (see chart) but it has not earlier been a subject of controversy. However, since the Sena-BJP government came to power, there has been a marked increase in the number of people deported. And, if Bengali Muslims in the city are to be believed, police oppression is on the rise. While Bangladeshis do need to be identified, it is pointed out that they need not be tortured before being sent back.

바카라 웹사이트Lawyer-activist Colin Gonsalves rages that the norms for identifying and deporting 'Bangladeshis' are ignored with impunity: "Many have Indian passports, Indian election IDs, ration cards, birth certificates of their children, school leaving certificates, marriage certificates...all these are prima facie proofs of cititzenship. If their passports are fraudulent, why aren't they being can-celled. Not one of their passports have been cancelled. Then how can they be deported? What is the procedure for deportation? Where is the notice given to them? They are denied legal aid, access to their family and are given the notice when in jail. These people are targetted because they are a minority Muslim community—more so because they are poor."

바카라 웹사이트The fear is palpable at Shri Sainath Nagar at Reay Road in portside, South Mumbai, a sub-human zopadpatti stretch that is home to over 100 Bengali Muslims. For whom, being flushed out by the cops in the middle of the night has become a way of life.

"It happens in the first and last week of every month," says Ahmed, a grocer in the locality. "The police stop by my shop and ask me: 'who are the Bangladeshis?' My answer is always the same: I haven't been to their gaons (villages), so I don't know. And like me, they are all here to earn their livelihood." Ahmed, himself a Bangladeshi, came to India in 1987 at the age of 16.

바카라 웹사이트"Ten years ago, it was easy getting a ration card; today it is difficult," he says. "Agents or dalals are out to make a quick buck out of the desperation of Bangladeshis. They want more money all the time and if you fall out with them, they inform the police. Finally, it is not the police but our own people who squeal on us. Poverty forces one to do anything for money."

Most Bengali Muslims live in slums that dot Reay Road, Dockyard Road, Wadala, Antop Hill, Mira Road and Thane. Many are either in the embroidery business or are self-employed—earning not more than Rs 2,000 per month. The women are often employed as domestic help.

Indeed, even the women are not spared, say the Bengali-speaking residents, alleging visits as late at 3.00 am by drunken cops. Nekjaan Sheikh recounts: "The policewomen are as rough as the men and if we resist, they ask the policemen to drag us out of our homes. My 18-month-old baby was suffering from tuberculosis when they came to take us away. I was spared because we paid them some money but my husband, the sole earning member of our home, was deported."

The Bengali-speaking Muslims are an uno-rganised and weak votebank, largely ignored by local politicians. "Even then, the Hindu Hridaysamrat held us responsible for the defeat of the Sena candidates in the last polls," says a furious Mohammed Aslam Hussain. "We generally vote for Congress or the Samajwadi Party because the Sena-BJP government used the police machinery to flush us out of the city."

THE police deny the charges. "This has been going on since 1982 and every year almost 400-500 people have been deported. There is a procedure which is followed and it is most unpalatable when we are accused of deporting people arbitrarily. How can we cancel anyone's passport when the same can only be done by the regional passport office?" asks Dr P.S. Pasricha, joint commissioner, law and order. But the fact that the police deport the 'wrong ones' is reflected in the fact that the West Bengal government believes that only 17 of the 54 people sent to Bengal last fortnight were foreigners. A point hotly contested by the Mumbai police.

So, what is the prescribed procedure of identifying and deporting illegal immigrants? The beat constable first gathers information about suspected foreigners. The information is then verified by confidential enquiries executed by the special branch. Inspectors visit the homes of those suspected, who then have to provide their birth certificate, school-leaving certificate, ration card, electoral identity card and domicile certificate to verify nationality. Section 9 of the Foreigners Act 1946 puts the burden of proving nationality on the suspect.

In the event of failure to produce any document to prove Indian nationality, the suspect is charged under Section 3(a), 6(a) of the Passport (Entry into India) Rule 1950—read with Section 14 of the Foreigners Act 1946—and produced before the Metropolitan Magistrate, 37th Court, Esplanade, Mumbai. The court remands the suspect to police custody ranging from seven to 14 days. During this period, if those close to the suspect are unable to produce proof of nationality, the police seeks the court's permission to deport the 'illegal resident'. On receipt of the court's permission, the deputy commissioner of police, SB(I), CID issues deportation orders under Section 3(2) (C) of the Foreigners Act 1946.

Finally, the Bangladeshi deportees are sent with police escort to the Border Security Force (BSF) station and handed over. Further deportation is completed by the BSF at any of the following checkposts:Bangaon, Krishna Nagar, Haridaspur, Seema Nagar, Kalyani or Sukhiya.

This is what is laid down in the books. In reality, the Bengali-speaking people say that they are rounded up, beaten, taken to the police station. Those who can cough up anything between Rs 800 and Rs 1,500 are allowed to go. The rest, after a legal procedure that they claim is unfair, are packed off to the border. "It is a big business for the police and the agents. They are hand-in-glove," alleges a resident. "Even if they round up 10 people a night, at the rate of Rs 1,000, they make a lot of money."

But even those left at the border in No Man's Land wind up in India again. "It's a senseless procedure," says Mohammed who lives in a settlement on Barrister Nathpai Road, "because every one person left at the border returns with three more. Economic problems compel them to do so."

"There are Bangladeshis in this area," agrees Haseena Bibi who came to India from Bangladesh after the 1971 war, "but they don't have any papers. They speak the language differently from the Indian Bengalis. But the police don't know the difference. They should be targetted, not people like us who have lived here for over 20 years." Son Asghar angrily adds: "ID cards, ration cards, marriage certificates, we have everything. The Nepali gurk-has are not targetted. Why? Jyoti Basu is originally from Bangladesh; L.K. Advani is from Pakistan. Will they be asked to go back? They won't. Because they are neither poor nor Muslims."

By the looks of it, operation weed-out threatens to haunt the headlines—with the Maharashtra government giving a clean chit to the police. It has already unleashed a war of words between the West Bengal and Maharashtra governments. And, as the stories of police torture and highhandedness unfold, the deportation question has already become infamous as a human rights issue.