Family members of a 19-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal have alleged that he was forced into Bangladesh at gunpoint by the Border Security Force after being arrested and kept in a detention centre in Rajasthan for two months.

After a video of the man, Amir Sheikh, speaking to residents in Bangladesh was widely circulated online, his family filed a police complaint, his uncle, Mohammed Ajmaul Sheikh, told Scroll on Saturday.

In the video, Amir Sheikh can be heard saying that he is a resident of West Bengal’s Malda. He said he was working in Rajasthan and the state police picked him up on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi.

Amir Sheikh also claimed that he had shown his Aadhaar card and additional documents of his parents to the police, but they “insisted on an ID proof”, which he did not have.

“I do not know anybody in Bangladesh,” he can be heard saying. “I have nothing to eat.”

Mohammed Ajmaul Sheikh told Scroll that Amir Sheikh had gone to Rajasthan three months ago.

“A contractor had informed us about his arrest and we had submitted all the documents with the help of him,” said Mohammed Ajmaul Sheikh. “He had submitted Aadhaar and birth certificates. But they did not accept them.”

The family also claimed that the Rajasthan Police had demanded Rs 50,000 to release Amir Sheikh. “But we were unable to manage the money and he spent two months at a detention centre in Rajasthan,” said Mohammed Ajmaul Sheikh.

He added that the family did not know about Amir Sheikh’s whereabouts till the video appeared online.

“We spoke with him once after a Bangladeshi person made a call to us,” said Mohammed Ajmaul Sheikh. He also claimed that the Border Security Force had assaulted Amir Sheikh.

The family has filed a police complaint in West Bengal, stating that they possess documents proving they have been living in India since the 1950s.

This comes amid the Trinamool Congress raising alarms about reports alleging that several Bengali-speaking migrant workers had been detained in parts of the country on suspicion of being Bangladeshis.

Since the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, individuals who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

In May, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs directed the states and Union Territories to verify the credentials of persons suspected to be undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

On July 19, the police in Gurugram detained at least 74 migrant workers on the suspicion that they were from Bangladesh, The Wire reported. Of these, 11 were from West Bengal and 63 from Assam.

Scroll reported on Tuesday that even the son of an Assam Police constable was detained on suspicion of being an undocumented Bangladeshi immigrant.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said India should stop unlawfully deporting people to Bangladesh without due process.

The organisation said that the government should instead “ensure everyone’s access to procedural safeguards to protect against arbitrary detention and expulsion”.

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