Leader of the Opposition of the Assam Legislative Assembly Debabrata Saikia wrote to Union Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar on Friday raising concern about “due process and constitutional rights” not being observed in the ongoing detentions and alleged “pushbacks” into Bangladesh in the state.
Since May 23, scores of people – most of them declared foreigners by the state’s Foreigners’ Tribunals – have been detained by police, with family members saying they remain in the dark about their whereabouts since. Many families have identified their kin in the reports and videos coming from Bangladesh of people who had been “pushed into” the country through the Indo-Bangladesh border.
The BSF and the Assam Police have been tight-lipped over the allegations.
In his letter, Saikia, the Congress MLA from Nazira, cited a speech by Jaishankar in Parliament to make his point. “It is patently obvious that the removal of undocumented foreign nationals is required,” he said, going on to quote the minister’s recent parliamentary statement in this regard: ‘It is the obligation of all countries to take back their nationals, if they are found to be living illegally abroad. This is however subject to an unambiguous verification of their nationality. This is not a policy practiced only by India; it is a generally accepted principle in international relations.’
“The Assam government’s actions contravene the principle you articulated in Parliament,” Saikia added. “Prior to the deportation of individuals designated as foreigners, unambiguous verification of their nationality should have been conducted. However, this was not done… This pattern of arbitrary repatriation, lack of transparency regarding detainees, and misrepresentation of facts constitutes a grave violation of constitutional safeguards and international human rights standards.”
He urged that the Assam government and BSF be told to adhere to “legal procedures”.
Saikia also mentioned that the families of those detained “remain uninformed, and state authorities decline to disclose the number of detainees and their locations to the public”.
He pointed out that following Supreme Court directions in 2019, those declared foreigners who had spent more than three years in detention had been released on bail, with the detention time for the same further reduced to two years by the Court in 2020.
“A re-arrest of several individuals, among them many women, was carried out by the Assam Police on May 23rd, 2025. Published media accounts indicate that some detainees have been pushed to the no-man’s-land in the India-Bangladesh border region. Several of their cases remain under review by the Supreme Court. The denial by Bangladesh has consequently left these individuals stateless,” wrote Saikia.
As reported by The Indian Express earlier this month, the Union Home Ministry has set a 30-day deadline for states and Union Territories to verify credentials of persons suspected to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar. After the 30-day period, if their documents are not verified, they are to face deportation.
In a set of instructions issued this month, the Home Ministry also asked states and UTs to invoke their statutory powers to detect, identify and deport illegal immigrants.
