On April 26, four days after the Pahalgam terror attack, Liyakat Ali was sleeping at his home in Ahmedabad’s Chandola Talav slum when a posse of policemen knocked on his door. It was 4 am.
Ali and five other members of his family were asked to step out. For the next four hours, they were made to sit in a football ground nearby.
Hundreds of other residents in the neighbourhood had been similarly rounded up as a part of a drive to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
Around 8 am, the women were let go. The men were paraded on the streets and made to walk to a police station 3 km away.
That was the last time Hamida bano, Ali’s sister-in-law, saw him. The 51-year-old native of Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district has been missing since.
Ali’s family members fear that he might have been deported to Bangladesh as he has not turned up in two months.
On May 8, as Scroll had reported, around 78 undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, all detained in Ahmedabad, were allegedly flown out of India in a military aircraft and then “pushed” across the water into Bangladesh, a police report in Bangladesh’s Satkhira town claimed.
“He is mentally ill and keeps to himself,” said Muzaffarali Shaikh, his elder brother. “We fear he may not have been able to identify himself [as an Indian] before the police.”
On May 5, Liyakat’s elder brother Muzaffarali Shaikh filed a habeas corpus petition with the Gujarat High Court, seeking information from the police on his whereabouts. But a single-judge bench dismissed the plea on June 24.
The court based its decision on an affidavit submitted by police that they “never detained or arrested” Ali. However, the family submitted news footage from TV9 Gujarati news channel, dated April 26, that showed Liyakat Ali as one of the detainees sitting on the ground. Scroll spoke with two eye witnesses who last saw Ali at a police station.
The police produced a video in court, showing a man walking out of the crime branch office in Gayakwad Haveli on May 1, five days after Ali was detained. The police claimed that the man in the CCTV footage was Ali – and it was on this basis the court struck down Shaikh’s plea.
However, Shaikh’s advocate Aum Kotwal contested the claim. He told Scroll that the police had not submitted the footage to the family and that the prosecutor merely showed Kotwal the video in court.
“We don’t know if he is still detained, or in Bangladesh or wandering on the streets in Ahmedabad,” said Shaikh.
If he had been released from the police station, Shaikh said, Ali would have made his way back home.
The family will now approach the Supreme Court against the Gujarat High Court’s order.
When contacted, Ahmedabad police commissioner GS Malik told Scroll he “does not know much about this case”.
Since the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor, Indian authorities have carried out a nationwide crackdown on alleged illegal immigrants.
In a recent anti-foreigner drive in Mumbai’s Mira Road, seven Bengali Muslim men from West Bengal were branded Bangladeshi and “pushed out” of India. They were then brought back.
Many have been summarily “pushed back” into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force, or in the case of Rohingya Muslims, forcibly cast into international waters, in contravention of international law.
A migrant from UP
Ali is a native of Krishnapur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district. He moved to Ahmedabad 20 years ago to live with his elder brother.
At first, he took up a job at the Jay Bharat Textiles mill but had to quit because of his mental health challenges.
He was unemployed and spoke very little with others, his family said. “He would mutter to himself,” Shaikh said. “His mental health worsened after his wife left him.” The family took him to various dargahs or shrines to find a cure but a medical diagnosis of his condition was never done.
On April 26, Shaikh said he was in Barabanki when the police turned up at their door.
“My wife, daughter-in-law and my granddaughter were also picked up but they were released in four hours,” Shaikh, an auto rickshaw driver, said. “They were asked to submit identification proof while the men, including my two sons and Ali, were detained.”
According to Ali’s nephew, Akbar Ali, they were first made to sit in the open ground near their home till 8.30 am. “Then we were asked to walk for about 3 km to the Behrampura police station,” he said. “No food or water was given to us till then.”
Hozefa Ujjaini, activist and advocate from Ahmedabad, alleged that the manner in which the police carried out detentions was illegal. “People were paraded in public, including children,” Ujjaini said. “This is a violation of human rights.”
From there, the detainees were driven less than 2 km away to the crime branch office in Gayakwad Haveli. “We all sat there till 2 pm. Then they began to shift us to different police stations in groups,” Ali said. “My brother and I were taken to Juhapura police station. I saw my uncle at the crime branch before I left. He was quiet and kept to himself. We did not get a chance to convince the police to let us take him with us.”
Shaikh’s wife Hamidabanu said that on April 26, after being released she gathered all the documents of her family members and went to the crime branch office.
She waited there until 2 am before returning home. The next afternoon, both her sons were released by the police. “We looked for my uncle, but we had no idea where he was,” Ali said.
According to his family, Ali was last seen – sitting by himself – by their neighbour Mohammed Shah, who was released by the police on April 28. “He was in the Gaikwad Haveli crime branch office. I was amongst the last to leave from there,” Shah told Scroll.
Houses demolished
The detention of the family’s members was followed by the demolition of their home.
On April 28, the family was told by municipal officials to remove all their belongings from the hutment in Chandola.
The next morning, Shaikh’s house along with hundreds of other homes were demolished by the Ahmedabad municipal corporation. The officials claimed that they were targeting illegal encroachments made by suspected Bangladeshi immigrants.
“It was chaotic,” Akbar Ali said. “We were running around to look for my uncle and our house was getting destroyed.” The family moved to a relative’s house for the next three days.
Ujjaini, the activist, said that several families, including the Shaikhs, received no notice before their houses were demolished.
On May 1, Shaikh returned from Barabanki. With him, he brought land papers in the name of Liyakat Ali, and his ration card. “We went to the Gayakwad Haveli crime branch. There, the police told us to check with Juhapura police. The Juhapura police asked us to go to Sahibaug police. We kept running from one station to another,” he said. The family visited at least six police stations, where those detained had been kept.
A week later, the family finally filed a habeas corpus petition in the high court.
On June 10, the public prosecutor showed a video in court claiming that Ali was released on May 1.
Shaikh said they did not get to see the video. “All we know is that the police took him from his home,” Shaikh said. “If he is mentally ill, it is their responsibility to ensure he returns back safely.”
Shaikh said Ali remembers where he lives and would have come home on May 1. “Others whose houses were not demolished would have told him where we went,” Shaikh said. “We all know each other. But he never came to Chandola.”
The family’s only hope now is in the Supreme Court.
