Gurgaon ripples in Assam village as young men return home in droves

"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.

- SUKRITA BARUAH

Shaken by the Gurgaon 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.

Not just him, six other Bengali-Muslim men from his village, Haoripet 1, in the Gossaigaon subdivision of Kokrajhar, who had been living and working in Gurgaon, have returned fearing detention.

In mid-July, the Gurgaon 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 Gurgaon's Sector 74A.