Muslim citizens and Rohingya refugees face forcible expulsions and pushbacks under intensified Home Ministry “illegal immigrant” verification campaign
(Dhaka, July 31, 2025)—The Indian Government must immediately end its unlawful campaign of expulsion against Indian Muslim citizens and Rohingya refugees, said Fortify Rights today. Indian authorities have intensified their “illegal immigrant” verification campaign in recent months, arbitrarily arresting, detaining, torturing, and coercively removing members of its Muslim minorities—including those with valid documentation or citizenship—as well as Rohingya refugees, in violation of India’s international human rights obligations.
“India is targeting its Muslim citizens and refugees with a discriminatory campaign of arrest, detention, and forced expulsion in violation of their rights,” said John Quinley, Director at Fortify Rights. “These actions not only violate international human rights law, but deepen the dangerous marginalization of Muslims and refugees in India.”
Muslim communities and refugees in India are increasingly at risk since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was first elected in 2014. Fortify Rights’ new investigation finds that in recent months, authorities in BJP-run states have arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured, and coercively expelled Muslim minorities and Rohingya refugees. These efforts intensified in recent months, after deadly attacks in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, which Indian authorities alleged were linked to Pakistan-based militant groups. In response, on May 7, 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor, a retaliatory military campaign targeting alleged terrorist camps within Pakistan. Following the terror attack, BJP leaders and lawmakers have renewed their calls for stricter measures against what they termed “infiltrators” and “illegal immigrants” on Indian soil.
In May 2025, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs issued a directive mandating all states and union territories to verify the credentials of individuals suspected to be “illegal immigrants” within 30 days. The directive was sent to India’s Border Security Force (BSF) and Assam Rifles, which guard the country’s borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Since this directive was issued, Indian authorities have conducted mass raids, forcibly returned Rohingya refugees and expelled Indian Muslims, to Myanmar and Bangladesh.
According to Bangladeshi government data, since May 7, more than 1,800 people have been forced into Bangladesh from India. Indian officials reported that more than 2,000 have been sent to Bangladesh since May 7, 2025.
From May to July 2025, Fortify Rights spoke with 16 individuals, including Muslim residents in the states of Assam and Gujarat, Rohingya refugees in India, relatives of detainees, as well as an Indian lawyer and a Bangladesh police officer at the border. Fortify Rights also documented torture and ill-treatment during India’s arrest and expulsion campaign.
A Indian Muslim citizen, 30, in Gujarat State, but originally from the state of West Bengal, told Fortify Rights how the Indian police detained and later expelled him to Bangladesh in May 2025, where he now remains: “The police told us, ‘Acknowledge that you are from Bangladesh, you are Bangladeshi. [Or] we will kill you.’ … For 15 to 20 days, they kept us in an Indian jail.”
Indian police demanded he convert to Hinduism if he wanted to remain in India:
They [the police] said, “If you convert to become a Hindu, we will release you. Then I said, “No, I don’t want to change my faith. If I have to die, I will die.” … They [the police] said, “We will send you to Pakistan, you are all extremists.”
…
From the prison, they took us to an airplane, we were blindfolded, and our hands were tied. They onboarded us, and [after the flight] they took us on a vessel. On the ship, they tortured us very brutally. … I have never been to Bangladesh; this is my first time in this country. I don’t have any relatives in Bangladesh. … I want to return to India. … They sent me to Bangladesh forcefully.
The man remains in Bangladesh and is unable to return to India.
In Assam State, the state government is revising the National Register of Citizens (NRC) campaign to identify and expel “illegal immigrants,” many of whom have families who have lived in the country for generations.
Another Indian Muslim, 50, told Fortify Rights about being detained at Matia Transit Camp, India’s largest detention facility for irregular migrants and refugees, in Assam’s Goalpara District, and days later, being forcibly expelled to Bangladesh, saying:
On May 23 [2025], I was asked to report to the Mikirbheta police station at 11 p.m. As soon as I arrived at the police station, I was detained. … I kept screaming that I was born and raised in India, that I am a government teacher, and that I had already served time in a detention camp for two years from 2018 to 2020. I spent at least a couple of days in the [Matia] Transit Camp before I was taken to a military camp of the BSF [Border Security Force]. … On the night of May 26, we were driven overnight with the BSF through the jungle and waterways, and were left in no man’s land [on the India and Bangladesh border]. … I was in a group of 14 people pushed back … My hands were tied, and I was blindfolded.
The man continued: “The BSF fired rubber bullets at us while we were in no man’s land just to force us to the other side [in Bangladesh]. I never thought that I would be made a foreigner in my own country.”
Four days later, with support from his relatives in India, the man negotiated with the Indian authorities to be allowed back into Assam State because of a pending petition to the Supreme Court filed in December 2024 related to his family’s citizenship. The court case is still pending. An Indian lawyer representing the family told Fortify Rights: “Their family has a history going back at least a hundred years to colonial Assam. They have documents [proving their residence in Assam] from the 1900s, and Bangladesh was created in 1971.”
Another Indian Muslim resident of Assam State told Fortify Rights how her father was taken into Indian police custody and later forced into Bangladesh on May 23, 2025. She said:
My father was called a Bangladeshi all his life, but that he would be sent to Bangladesh was unimaginable. We are Indians. … We are being thrown out of our country. Why was my father sent to Bangladesh when he had all the documents [proving his Indian citizenship]?
The woman’s father was then intercepted by Bangladesh border guard forces and sent back again to India. Her grandmother, father, aunt, and other relatives had been declared “bidexi” or “foreigners” by a Foreigners Tribunal in Assam State, a quasi-judicial body, in 2011 and 2012.
Others who were expelled were reportedly transported to coastal areas and forced into the water near the maritime border of Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi police officer, who received a group of more than 70 people pushed by Indian authorities into Bangladesh, told Fortify Rights: “On the night of May 8, 2025, speedboats pushed them into the sea and forced them to swim ashore.”
Rohingya refugees are also being detained and sent to Bangladesh, as part of India’s campaign against “illegal immigrants.”
On May 6, 2025, authorities arrested scores of Rohingya, including both Muslim and Christian refugees, during coordinated raids in New Delhi under the pretext of a refugee biometric verification exercise, detaining men, women, and children, and later forcibly returning dozens to Myanmar, where they face an ongoing genocide.
Around the same time in May, Indian authorities forcibly transferred at least 150 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh. A 29-year-old Rohingya refugee and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cardholder, told Fortify Rights: “We were put into vehicles and, in the middle of the night, taken to the border by the BSF [Border Security Force],” he said. “[They] told us, ‘Now go straight into Bangladesh. Do not come back. If you return, we will shoot you dead.’” The man is now in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The authorities continue to harass and routinely threaten other Rohingya refugees with forcible returns.
A 23-year-old Rohingya refugee told Fortify Rights that police arrested and beat him on the street on May 8, 2025, falsely labelling him a Pakistani despite possessing a valid UNHCR refugee card. They also invited passing civilians to join the beatings. He told Fortify Rights, “The police said, ‘He’s a Pakistani, if you want to beat him with us.’ … So when the locals heard that I am Pakistani [and joined the beatings] … They were beating me continuously.”
While in custody, officers stripped the man naked, beat the soles of his feet, and forced him to jump on his bruised and injured feet. “You deserve to be under our feet … since you are not Indian,” they told him. Authorities later processed him for deportation, but ultimately released him due to a lawyer’s intervention.
In a separate incident, a 37-year-old Rohingya refugee was arrested by police officers on June 26 in New Delhi and brought to the police station, where officers forced him to write a confession. “One of the police officers gave me a blank white paper. He told me, ‘You write there, your story—that you came to India illegally, we detained you, and we will deport you. You sign there,’” he told Fortify Rights. He was released the same day due to his impending resettlement to a third country.
A Bangladesh Foreign Ministry official told the media that Dhaka had raised the issue with New Delhi multiple times, “We’ve asked India to follow proper procedures, but have yet to receive a response. Meanwhile, the push-ins continue,” he said.
In December 2019, the Modi administration passed the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Under the act, for the first time in India, religion is a basis for granting citizenship. Furthermore, Indian officials rely on the Foreigners Act of 1946, which grants sweeping powers to detain and remove any non-citizen deemed a “foreigner.” The Citizenship Act (1955), Section 2(b), defines an “illegal migrant” as a person who enters India without valid documents or overstays a visa.
In 2019, U.N. experts specifically expressed concern over the implementation of the NRC in Assam State and “its potentially far-reaching consequences for millions of people, in particular persons belonging to minorities who risk statelessness, deportation or prolonged detention.”
Customary international law, which reflects widespread and consistent state practice and is legally binding on all states, obliges the Indian government and, by extension, Indian state-level authorities to protect Indian citizens from expulsion, prevent statelessness, and ensure that refugees are not forcibly returned to situations where they may face harm or persecution.
Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which India is a signatory, states that: “Everyone has a right to a nationality; No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality.” The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which India is a state party, prohibits discrimination before the law “on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
India is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol and lacks a domestic law protecting refugees; however, it remains obligated to respect the international customary law principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the forced return of Rohingya refugees to situations where they will face persecution and other serious human rights abuses..
“India is stripping Indian Muslim citizens and Rohingya refugees of their rights,” said John Quinley. “Despite its obligations under international law, India continues to violate these commitments through a series of disturbing official laws and policies tinged with ethno-religious supremacism.”