Four Muslim traders from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district were given a 72-hour deadline to leave Odisha’s Nayagarh after being accused of being Bangladeshis and Rohingya migrants, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The men had lived in Nayagarh for several years selling mosquito nets, quilts and woollens on two-wheelers. All four of them were from the Sagarpara gram panchayat in the Jalangi block of the Domkal subdivision in Murshidabad.

On November 27, one of the men, Saheb Sekh, said that police officers had come to their rented accommodation and accused them of being “Rohingya living illegally in India”, The Telegraph reported.

Sekh said that the officers asked for his identity papers.

“I showed him my Aadhaar and voter card,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “He was not satisfied. He called my landlord and asked all of us to report to the station by 5pm.”

Later in the day, the four men went to the Odagaon police station, where an officer asked them to leave the town within three days. The men alleged that they were also accused of being Rohingya and Bangladeshis for speaking in Bengali.

The police also took signed copies of their documents.

Abdus Salam, one among the four men, claimed that another group that was also present in the police station and harassing them was part of a Hindutva outfit. “We have seen them in markets and other places,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying.

It was not clear whether the four men had returned to Murshidabad.

The incident comes amid allegations by the Trinamool Congress that Bengali-speaking workers are being discriminated against in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis.

Since the terror attack on April 22 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, the police in several states ruled by the BJP 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, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

The matter is also being heard by the Supreme Court on a petition filed by the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board.

In Odisha, there have been several instances in recent months of Bengali Muslims facing violence and intimidation.

On November 24, Rahul Islam, a 24-year-old winterwear seller from Murshidabad, was allegedly accused of being Bangladeshi and beaten up by a mob in Ganjam after he refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram”, The Telegraph reported.

Islam’s employer, Mainul Sarkar, who also returned to his home in Murshidabad, alleged that he had gone to the police in Odisha for help but did not receive any.

In July, hundreds of Bengali workers in Odisha’s Jharsuguda had been detained on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis. Several of them were released after the authorities ascertained that they were Indians.