Bengali-speaking workers panic as police conduct immigration checks

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- OUR CORRESPONDENT

GURUGRAM: Anju Khatun, who says she is from West Bengal, was visibly terrified while recounting the ordeal she faced earlier this week while frantically searching for her husband at the holding centres set up by the Gurugram Police for illegal immigrants.

She is not the only one. Several Bengali-speaking people are petrified by the police's ongoing drive to identify illegal immigrants. Many claim that the police were targeting Bengali-speaking people.

According to police sources, under the drive, which has been going on for the past one week, more than 250 suspected people have been sent to the holding areas, where their documents were being verified.

A senior police officer said a verification process was being conducted to identify illegal immigrants and dismissed reports that migrant workers from West Bengal and Assam were being targeted and detained.

The drive has visibly affected sanitation works, with garbage piling up across the Millennium City. Most of the sanitation workers, who speak Bengali, have stopped showing up for work out of fear that they may be rounded up at the detention centre for domicile verification.