Denied by design? Why proving citizenship is a trial and tribulation for the poor

He is at a loss over what document could prove the Indian nationality of his 20-year-old son, Amir Sheikh, who was allegedly pushed into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force (BSF) last month, after being labelled as an illegal migrant.

Such harassment has become almost a fait accompli for those suspected of being foreigners in India, highlights a recent study on access to justice in the citizenship determination process, conducted by the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) and Queen Mary University of London.

Proving citizenship

The Foreigners Act places the responsibility to prove citizenship on the individual accused of being a foreigner, which is contrary to the standard principles of criminal and civil law.

Saddled with this burden, many of the accused struggle to convince authorities of their Indian nationality, even after presenting commonly accepted identity documents such as Aadhaar cards, voter IDs, or ration cards.

“The report documents widespread arbitrariness in decision-making, including the wholesale rejection of documentary and oral evidence, and the absence of legal norms to protect individuals from wrongful targeting. These are not isolated failures—they reflect an institutionalised machinery of exclusion, with severe regional and national implications,” said NLSIU in its overview of the report published last month.

Also read: Harassed in BJP states, Bengali migrants return home to empty job promises

It cited several cases of individuals rendered stateless despite possessing adequate documentation to prove their citizenship.

Justice delayed

Rahim Ali—a poor agricultural labourer from Kashimpur village in Assam’s Nalbari district—died in 2022, spending the last 18 years of his life struggling to defend his status as an Indian citizen, and the last 10 years as a man stripped of legal identity—declared a “foreigner” by a Foreigners Tribunal (FT), on the ground that he had unlawfully entered India from Bangladesh, the report highlighted.

“Ali had submitted school records, electoral rolls, and community testimonies to establish his Indian citizenship—but to no avail," said the report.

Even the Gauhati High Court offered no relief, dismissing his documents and testimonies as there were minor discrepancies in the official records that he presented to establish his citizenship, the report pointed out.

Finally, the Supreme Court did justice to him, observing that the state had proceeded against Rahim Ali without any material basis, and that the evidence he submitted was rejected without adequate reason or attention to basic principles of fairness.

But the justice came too late. Ali was already dead by then.

Unmaking citizens

Several instances in which minor discrepancies, such as variations in age or spelling of names in official documents, led to individuals being declared foreigners have been documented in the report titled “Unmaking Citizens: The Architecture of Rights Violations and Exclusion in India’s Citizenship Trials".

Also read: Mamata, Himanta politically escalate citizenship row, ignoring legal recourse

Amir Sheikh’s case once again lays bare the inherent flaws in India’s citizenship verification process.

After running from pillar to post, but with no avail, Jiem Sheikh on Thursday (August 7) filed a habeas corpus petition in the Calcutta High Court to secure the return of his youngest son, Amir Sheikh, who has reportedly been languishing in Bangladesh for over a fortnight now.

Amir, a resident of Jalalpur village under Kaliachak-I block of West Bengal’s Malda district, went to Chittor in Rajasthan a few months ago to work as a labourer. He was picked up there by the Rajasthan police on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi.

“After being informed about his detention, I sent a copy of the deed to our ancestral land, which dates back to 1941, to prove that my son is an Indian. My son also had an Aadhaar card and showed it to the police. But they were not convinced of his Indian citizenship because he did not have an electoral photo identity card or a PAN card. He was arrested and sent to jail,” Jiem Sheikh told The Federal over the phone from his village, where, he claimed, the family has been living for over 400 years.

Even as the family was trying to secure his release from police custody, a video surfaced on July 24, in which Amir was seen narrating how he was brought handcuffed to West Bengal from a jail in Rajasthan by the police and then pushed into Bangladesh with the help of BSF.

The Federal could not independently verify the veracity of the video.

The ordeal

The district administration and the local MP got in touch with the concerned central authorities after the video became viral to bring Amir home. They have not met with success so far.

Also read: TMC-BJP rally contest over migrants hints at Bengal poll planks for 2026

Confirming that Amir is a bona fide resident of Jalalpur, Malda district magistrate Nitin Singhania said the process to bring the youth back has been initiated through proper channels.

Congress MP of Malda South constituency, Isha Khan Choudhury, claimed to have personally met BSF director-general Daljit Singh Choudhary seeking his intervention for the repatriation of the youth. Choudhury said the DG told him that the BSF had held three flag meetings with its Bangladesh counterpart, the Border Guard Bangladesh, to bring Amir back.

BSF spokesperson Subhendu Bhardwaj, when contacted by The Federal, said he was unaware of the case and would respond after gathering the information. (The copy will be updated if and when the response is received.)

Jiem Sheikh said the judiciary is now his only hope. He has approached the court, challenging the Centre’s decision to deport his son to Bangladesh and seeking its intervention to bring him back.

Disturbing trend

The ordeal of the Sheikh family is not an isolated incident. Rather, it reflects a growing trend of the state increasingly questioning the legitimacy of its own citizens and subjecting them to rigorous identity verification processes.

The ongoing crackdown against alleged illegal migrants from Bangladesh and the proposed special intensive revision of electoral rolls across the country are seen as part of the broader citizenship determination exercise. This has raised concerns about its disproportionate impacts on the poor and marginalised, leaving them increasingly vulnerable.

Several migrant workers The Federal spoke to reiterated the opaque and oppressive nature of the exercise, recounting their personal ordeals in trying to prove their citizenship.

Nazimuddin Mandal from Taritipur village in Murshidabad district and Mehboob Sheikh from Bhagwangola district were rendered stateless and stranded for two days in no man’s land between India and Bangladesh. This is because the identity documents issued to them by the government were deemed unacceptable by the representatives of the same state machinery.

"The Aadhaar and voter ID cards issued to me by government authorities, ironically, were not enough to prove that I am an Indian,” said Nazimuddin, who was picked up by the Mumbai police along with Mehboob and others on June 10 on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals.

Blatantly illegal

What happened next was even more inexplicable and blatantly illegal.

Also read: BJP is labelling Bengali-speaking Indian citizens as Bangladeshis: Mamata

The accused were not produced before any court. Instead, they were flown to Bagdogra in West Bengal and handed over to the BSF, who then deported them to Bangladesh on the night of June 15.

The West Bengal police were kept in the dark about the entire operation, in a blatant violation of the established norms of India’s federal structure.

The West Bengal government learned of the deportation of its citizens only after a video, filmed by a Bangladeshi national showing them stranded in no man’s land between the two countries, went viral. They were brought back after the intervention of the state government. But their right to seek a livelihood freely across the country is yet to be secured.

“The construction company I worked for in Mumbai cautioned me against going there without a birth certificate and school records. But where is the guarantee that even those documents would be accepted?” asked Mehboob Sheikh.

Those documents, and more, could not protect Debashis Das, a migrant worker from Chinsurah in West Bengal’s Hooghly district, from harassment in Odisha, another BJP-ruled state.

He had a passport, birth certificate, secondary school certificate, Aadhaar card, PAN card, EPIC and even a police verification certificate. Yet, Odisha police were not convinced about his Indian nationality and kept him in a makeshift detention camp for days.

Govt directive

The home ministry in May instructed all state governments and Union territories to constitute Special Task Forces (STFs) in every district to identify and deport illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

It set a 30-day deadline to complete the process, stating that individuals whose claims to Indian citizenship could not be verified within the stipulated period should be handed over to the Border Security Force (BSF) for deportation.

The ministry’s directive bypassed the legal procedures required to determine an individual’s status as a foreigner, effectively granting the police the authority to detain suspects for days and deport them without due process or trial.

Murky verification process

Quoting a Bangladesh government’s figure, Fortify Rights, a human rights organisation registered in the United States and Switzerland, stated that 1,855 people were deported by India to the neighbouring country between May 7 and July 3. However, it could not be ascertained how many among them were illegal migrants.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday (August 7) said her government brought back more than 2,000 migrant workers from various parts of India, while many are still languishing in detention camps in the BJP-ruled states.

Meanwhile, the identity verification process has grown murkier, as the credibility of documents such as Aadhaar cards, voter IDs, ration cards, and even passports has come under the scanner following recent cases of forgery and fraud in West Bengal.