AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday said that if the government wanted to deport illegal Bangladeshi nationals from India, they should begin with deposed former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed by protests last year.
Hasina has been living in India since her government was ousted in August 2024.
“Why are we keeping that deposed leader (Sheikh Hasina) in the country? Send her back. She is also a Bangladeshi, isn’t it?” Owaisi said in an interview with The Indian Express.
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Owaisi said while “poor Bengali-speaking Indians from Malda and Murshidabad” were being sent back from Pune to Kolkata and “dumped in no man’s land”, India was providing shelter to “one Bangladeshi living in our country and creating problems by giving statements and speeches”.
Responding to a question on the alleged targeting of Bengali migrants across the country, Owaisi asked, “What right does the police have to put these people in detention centres? Everyone has become a vigilante.”
{{/usCountry}}Responding to a question on the alleged targeting of Bengali migrants across the country, Owaisi asked, “What right does the police have to put these people in detention centres? Everyone has become a vigilante.”
{{/usCountry}}The Hyderabad MP said there have been “disturbing reports" of Indian citizens being sent to Bangladesh “at gunpoint”.
“Police in different parts of India have been illegally detaining Bengali-speaking Muslim citizens and accusing them of being Bangladeshi," Owaisi alleged.
He said such people were "the poorest of the poor” and were mostly slum-dwellers who worked as domestic workers and ragpickers. “They have been targeted repeatedly because they are not in a position to challenge police atrocities,” Owaisi said.
“Police do not have the power to detain people just because they speak a particular language. These wide-net detentions are illegal,” Owaisi had said in a post on X, while condemning an order by the district magistrate in Gurugram.