Calcutta High Court on Wednesday questioned the Centre the rationale behind country-wide raids targeting Bengali-speaking individuals suspecting them to be illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. This comes after West Bengal government told the Calcutta HC that the development is ‘alarming’. The court later asked both Centre and the state government to submit affidavits accordingly
A division bench of Justices, Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra, who were hearing the case, questioned, “What were the reasons? Was this pre- planned?”
“Let these issues be cleared. Else, it will send out a wrong message. This could be a wrongful act. Allegations have been made that people are being illegally deported to Bangladesh just because they speak Bengali,” it said.
The Court was hearing a Habeas Corpus petitions filed by the family members of Birbhum migrants deported to Bangladesh last month.
How the argument played out?
Senior Advocate Kalyan Bandyopadhyay, who appeared for the State of West Bengal before a Division Bench, noted that the Delhi Police cannot detain people for speaking Bengali, and further said, “This is a family from Birbhum district… Who will decide if someone is Bangladeshi? Not the police, but the appropriate authority… All these cases, I have gone through the reports, it is very alarming,”
He also demanded that the Centre report how many people have been deported to Bangladesh so far.
Responding to it, the counsel representing the Central government asserted that no individual has been deported solely for speaking Bengali. “Around 165 people in Kashmir, including some who spoke Bengali, were detained after Pahalgam attack but all of them were released later.”
He also pointed out that the relatives of those who were deported have already moved the Delhi High Court, a detail that, he argued, has been deliberately withheld in the present case.
The Bench pulled up the petitioner’s counsel for hiding this fact, warning that the Court process cannot be misused. “Don’t play tricks on us,” the Bench said.