By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: Bengali-speaking Muslims elsewhere out of West Bengal are generally treated as ‘Bangladeshis’ by the state authorities. There are approximately 1000 Bengali families living in Delhi’s Rohini area (Shahabad dairy, Shahabad, Daulatpura, Rithala, Sector 26, Prakash Vihar). They have been invariably discriminated in the name of Bangladeshi. Nowadays the authorities are trying to dislocate them as they want to make Delhi clean before the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
There are thousands of Bengali families on whom Delhi police has been committing atrocities and torture with excuse of Bangladeshi, which are not even illegal but also against human rights, a group of rights activists who visited and met the Bengali Muslim families in the area said.
All these people are from Birbhum, Malda and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal. Among them most are rag pickers, scrap workers or rickshaw pullers and their women mostly do household cleaning at homes in areas of Rohini.
“Yesterday when we (Kaushal Kishore (Gandhian) and Ittifaque (research scholar in JMI) visited the place we saw their true photo identity cards to ensure that they are not Bangladeshi. Most of them had voter identity cards of state government of West Bengal but since they are Muslims they are thought to be Bangladeshi by nearby people in the area,” say the activists.
“When we visited Police station police informed us that they have to clean and clear Delhi by December 2009 for Commonwealth Games 2010. All these people who have valid voter identity card of West Bengal are the target of Delhi police that is arresting them in the name of beggary and other laws. This is indeed a major violation of basic human rights,” the activists said