Watch | On the Bengal-Bangladesh Border, Thousands of Lives Could Change Direction

Name: Watch | On the Bengal-Bangladesh Border, Thousands of Lives Could Change Direction - The Wire
Uploaded: 2026-06-26T12:37:03+05:30
Channel: The Wire
Description: Madhu Sudhan Chatterjee speaks to the families caught in the middle of BJP's 'Detect, Delete and Deport' drive in West Bengal, forcing undocumented migrants to uproot their lives and cross the border into Bangladesh.

Madhu Sudhan Chatterjee speaks to the families caught in the middle of BJP's 'Detect, Delete and Deport' drive in West Bengal, forcing undocumented migrants to uproot their lives and cross the border into Bangladesh.

Madhu Sudan Chatterjee

Hundreds of people – men, women and children – have been making their way to Hakimpur, a small nondescript village on the West Bengal-Bangladesh border. They are undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

West Bengal's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) administration, led by chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, launched a "Detect, Delete and Deport" drive shortly after coming to power in April this year. Since then, holding centres have been set up across the state and hundreds of families have been pushed back across the border at Hakimpur in North 24 Parganas.

In this ground report, Madhu Sudhan Chatterjee speaks to the families caught in the middle, people who came to India for work and a better life and who are now forced to leave with little more than what they came with.

Read the full report on The Wire.

This article went live on June twenty-sixth, two thousand twenty six, at thirty-seven minutes past twelve at noon.

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