Workers detained in Gurugram arbitrarily, under vague order: CPI-ML leader Dipankar Bhattacharya

Gurugram, Jul 26 (PTI) CPI-ML general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya on Saturday alleged that people held in Gurugram on illegal immigrant charges were rounded up arbitrarily under a vague order.

On Saturday, he led a delegation of civil society activists to meet these people in Gurugram.

Eight Bangladeshi nationals were detained here as part of an ongoing drive to identify illegal immigrants. They are later released.

According to a press statement, the team visited Jai Hind Camp in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj before proceeding to Gurugram.

Bhattacharya said he found the residents of the camp had been living without electricity for over two weeks, after their connection was cut amid allegations of arriving in the country illegally from Bangladesh.

Even though the detainees were released from Gurugram camps, police gave vague and unsatisfactory answers about the methods used for identifying these "foreigners," he said.

The Left leader said the delegation found that the inspection was carried out at the order of the Ministry of Home Affairs, but the order itself was neither available in the public domain nor was it shared with the delegation by the DCP's office.

The workers detained claimed that they were rounded up by men who claimed to be police, but were in plainclothes, arrived in unmarked vehicles, and bore no badges of name or identification, he said.

They picked up several people and took them to different detention or holding centres.

At the centres, they were asked to produce documents such as Aadhar Card, voter ID card, ration cards, and PAN cards etc to prove their citizenship.

Bhattacharya said these people were held in police stations for extended durations, up to a week for some, during which some complained, they were subjected to police brutality and physical torture.

He also claimed the detainees were not given any 'certificate of verification' before they were released, rendering them vulnerable to future detentions and harassment.

He claimed that the authorities conducted their verification in an "arbitrary" manner, targeting the Bengali-speaking or those with "Muslim" names.

The party demanded that the MHA order and the Standard Operating Procedure be immediately released in the public domain, as also the rationale and the methods of identification and verification. PTI COR VN VN