“If I don’t work, my family won’t be able to eat. But the mahaul (atmosphere) there is scary. I will wait here for a couple of weeks, and if things improve, I will go back,” said Mohammad Anwar Hussain, from his home in Assam’s Kokrajhar. Shaken by the Gurugram police’s crackdown in the past two weeks, 22-year-old Hussain locked up his rented house in the city last Friday and took a train back to his village.
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Not just him, seven other Bengali-Muslim men from his village, Haoripet 1, in the Gossaigaon subdivision of Kokrajhar, who had been living and working in Gurugram, have returned fearing detention. In mid-July, the Gurugram police began what they called a ‘routine verification’ drive to identify Bangladeshis and Rohingya living illegally in the city, as part of which hundreds of Bengali-Muslims have been taken to and held in police stations and ‘holding centres’.
At least 250-odd such people have been released from these centres after document verification since the drive started.
Anwar’s uncle was one of those held as part of the drive, which cemented his decision to leave the city until the dust settles. He, his uncle, and others from his village were employed as sanitation workers and pantry workers in a sprawling corporate complex in Gurugram’s Sector 74A.
“Around July 14, I started seeing people being picked up, and though I have my documents, I felt uneasy. On July 16, my uncle was held. His landlord told him that the police were summoning him and that he should go to the Badshahpur police station. When he did, he was kept there for nearly a week and was let go only after our local police station in Gossaigaon spoke to them and confirmed that he was from here. He had a hard time, and that experience scared me. So I told my company that things are not good and I want to leave for some time, and they told me that it’s fine. I took a train and reached the village on Saturday. Thankfully, I had already sent my wife and two children back to the village earlier in the month,” said Hussain, who has worked in Gurugram for over five years.
Hazrat Ali (25) said he was terrified when dozens of people who lived and worked with him were picked up. “I live in a slum in the city, and for two days straight, police came and picked up one or two people from there. They were released after eight hours. On the third day, around 20-25 people were rounded up and kept for nearly a week. I was at work at the time. There were men from other parts of Assam like Dhubri, Barpeta and Bongaigaon. It was so scary, police could come any time, night or day, and take people away. Everyone around me started preparing to leave, and I felt that it wasn’t safe for me to stay back if everyone else was leaving,” he said.
He said that he does not intend to stay away from the city and his livelihood for long. “I have been making calls, and people in Gurugram are telling me that it will be better soon. So I am thinking of going back this weekend, I don’t want to lose my job,” he said.
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Another resident of the village, Aminul Hoque (20), landed in Gurugram just three months ago to join his elder brother at work, but left in panic soon after.
According to Nur Mohammad Ansari, who is part of the All BTC Minority Students Union (ABMSU), hundreds of Bengali-Muslims from Gossaigaon alone work in Gurugram. “We are trying to keep track of their situation. There are many others who are unable to come back because they are short on money. They are taking shelter in others’ houses or hiding somewhere else for fear of being detained,” he said.
“It was impossible to live there like that. We work hard for eight hours a day, and then we don’t know when at night someone will come, pick us up and take us away,” said Anwar.
The Gurgaon police, however, maintain that no genuine citizen needs to fear or flee the to their home state, and there is no need to panic.
