‘Stripped to underwear, left like that for 12 hours, called us Bangladeshis’: 2 men allege mistreatment at Gurgaon police station; cops deny claim | Gurgaon News

GURGAON: A group of 12 men rounded up for verification of their IDs last Friday was asked to strip down to their underwear at the police station they were taken to and held in lockup overnight before being moved to a holding centre, two of them alleged on Thursday after their release, reports Samad Hoque. Picked up from a slum settlement in Jharsa, the two men – one from Assam’s Chirang and the other from Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur – spent four days in detention at the holding centre in Badshapur and were allowed to go on Wednesday. Gurgaon police spokesperson Sandeep called teh allegations “false”. “The detainees were taken to the police station only for verification. No detainee was asked to strip,” another police officer told TOI.The man from Assam alleged cops in plainclothes came to the slum dwelling on July 18 around 11pm. “They randomly picked up four of us and stuffed us in the police van. Then they took us to Sector 10A police station and said we are Bangladeshis,” said the 37-year-old, who works in the city as a ragpicker. They were, he added, put into a lockup where eight men detained from other areas of the city were already lodged. “We pleaded that we had identity proof documents and we are Indians but they repeatedly called us Bangladeshis. Later, they asked us to strip down to our underwear and left us like that for almost 12 hours,” he alleged. The detentions are part of an ongoing exercise to identify Bangladeshis and Rohingya staying illegally here, based on May 2 orders of the Union home ministry. The Badshapur community centre is operating as one of the four ‘holding centres’ for suspected illegal immigrants who are being rounded up and taken there for verification of papers. The Uttar Dinajpur man who was detained gave a similar account of his detention on July 18. The 26-year-old, who works as a housekeeping staffer for a private firm in the city, claimed cops confiscated the detainees’ mobile phones too and ordered them to speak in their local dialects, in this case Bengali and Assamese. The men were allowed to call their families once to ask them to get verification documents, he said. At the detention centre, he said, they were repeatedly asked names, addresses and place of birth, but not abused or treated badly. “We saw two-three officials, either typing or writing something. We did not understand what, but it continued for four days,” he said. The 26-year-old, who too was released Wednesday, said food was provided regularly, but the detainees had just one sheet to sleep on. He added that many families from his slum settlement have left the city for their hometowns, fearing that they may be targeted because they are Bengalis.