gurugram: Anju Khatun, who says she is from West Bengal, was visibly terrified while recounting the ordeal she faced earlier this week while frantically searching for her husband at the holding centres set up by the Gurugram Police for illegal immigrants.
She is not the only one. Several Bengali-speaking people are petrified by the police’s ongoing drive to identify illegal immigrants. Many claim that the police were targeting Bengali-speaking people.
According to police sources, under the drive, which has been going on for the past one week, more than 250 suspected people have been sent to the holding areas, where their documents were being verified.
A senior police officer said a verification process was being conducted to identify illegal immigrants and dismissed reports that migrant workers from West Bengal and Assam were being targeted and detained.
The drive has visibly affected sanitation works, with garbage piling up across the Millennium City. Most of the sanitation workers, who speak Bengali, have stopped showing up for work out of fear that they may be rounded up at the detention centre for domicile verification.
“My husband had gone to clean cars at a residential society in Sector 56 on Monday when the police took him with them. It was in the late evening that I got to know that he was in a holding centre,” said Khatun, a resident of a slum in Sector 56.
“It was only after I reached the centre with our Aadhaar cards and other documents that the police released my husband. We are from West Bengal and have been staying in Gurugram for the past five years,” she said.
Sources claimed that more than 20 people from Assam’s Dhubri were kept in the community centre at Sector-10 by the police for five days before being released on Wednesday.
Jahanur Islam, who has been collecting garbage in the city for 10 years, said the police nabbed them five days ago. “We were not told why we were being held. All those nabbed collect garbage from houses around Kankarola and Panchgaon villages,” Islam said.
The senior officer said police have identified eight illegal immigrants, suspected to be from Bangladesh, during the drive so far, and some more verifications were being done.
“We are following the Centre’s guidelines on suspected illegal immigrants. We are not detaining them, but they are being kept in ‘holding areas’ till the verification process is completed, and, accordingly, we are letting them go,” DCP (Headquarters), Gurugram, Arpit Jain stated on Thursday.
“The only purpose of keeping them in the holding area is so that any illegal immigrant may not escape,” he said, adding that four holding areas have been set up under as many police zones in Gurugram.
Police said these holding areas have been set up at community centres in Badshahpur, Sector 10A, Sector 40 and Sector 1 in Manesar. On Tuesday, the administration appointed naib tehsildars as in charge of these centres.
“Under the guidelines of the Home Ministry, four holding centres have been created. All basic necessities, including medical facilities, are being provided to them at the centres.
“Those people who have been verified have been allowed to go. More than 50 people have been kept in each holding centre, where their documents are being checked. Everyone will be released after the investigation,” said Sandeep Kumar, the spokesperson of Gurugram Police.
The DCP said that Gurugram Police keeps conducting drives throughout the year to identify illegal immigrants. Those found overstaying, illegally staying, or not having valid documents
are deported, he said. About the current drive, Jain said that details of every suspected person were being sent to the district magistrate or the deputy commissioner in the state concerned for verification. “When we receive a report from
there, we take further action based on what it says,” he said. with agency inputs