At least 123 Rohingyas who were registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in India are still being sheltered in Bangladesh’s overcrowded Rohingya camps after being pushed across the border over a three-month period beginning May in 2025.
In recent times, the BGB had foiled at least 43 push-in attempts by the BSF in different border points along India until Saturday.
BGB headquarters data reveal that India pushed 2,344 people, including 126 Indian nationals, into Bangladesh between May 7, 2025 and January 26, 2026, excluding Rohingyas.
The Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner notified Bangladesh authorities in a letter to the secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief about the matter on July 14, 2025, but there has been no known action to repatriate the Rohingyas registered with the UNHCR in India.
‘To my knowledge, the Rohingyas are still in Bangladesh Rohingya camps at Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas in Cox’s Bazar,’ said RRRC chief Mohammed Mizanur Rahman.
A letter issued by the RRRC in July also showed that India had pushed 44 unregistered Rohingyas and 80 registered with UNHCR, Bangladesh into Bangladesh over the same period, all of whom were sheltered in Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals camps at Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas in Cox’s Bazar.
Disaster management and relief ministry secretary Md Saidur Rahman Khan said that he was unaware of the letter as he joined in the post in January this year.
Between July last year and January this year, according to Border Guard Bangladesh, 126 Indian nationals were pushed into Bangladesh.
They were subsequently pushed back into India.
Bangladesh’s porous border, which is often inadequately guarded, is frequently crossed -- both by Rohingyas fleeing religious persecution in Myanmar and by people affected by India’s push-in campaign.
Over 13 lakh Rohingyas have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar over the years.
The RRRC office said that the actual number of Rohingyas pushed into Bangladesh may be higher, but it does not have complete data.
Dhaka University international relations professor Mohammad Tanzimuddin Khan called the push-in of registered refugees ‘crimes against humanity,’ saying it targets a specific group based on ethnicity and religion.
‘Sending registered refugees to another country forcibly is a violation of the Geneva Convention as well,’ he said.
Border incidents between India and Bangladesh have intensified after the Bharatiya Janata Party stormed into power in West Bengal about a month ago.
West Bengal’s newly elected chief minister Suvendu Adhikari ordered the deportation of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants, though without following the legal procedure.
He has also ordered building ‘holding centres’ along border to push what he described as illegal migrants into Bangladesh.
The BJP over the past decade resorted to push-in campaigns frequently in several states.
In 2025, Indian security agencies in the neighbouring state of Assam sent dozens of Indian Muslims across the border into Bangladesh, accusing them of being undocumented immigrants, Al Jazeera reported on June 10.
The Indian nationals were immediately left stranded in no- man’s-land after Bangladesh pushed them back. India eventually took its nationals back, without ever offering an explanation on the matter.
The Al Jazeera report said that the recent developments left Indian Muslims in West Bengal worried, who feared that they too could find themselves victims of a campaign that the government has made clear is driven as much by the religious identity of its targets as by their legal status.
The report also noted that the deportation of mainly Muslim Bangladeshi migrants is also stoking religious tensions in West Bengal.
Quoting rights activists, Indian media reported that the Indian authorities are ‘acting only on a preconceived agenda and rhetoric’ against a particular community.
They pointed out that the police were picking up people at random and putting them in detention centres.
Suvendu recently said that nearly 5,000 Bangladeshi citizens had been deported in the past one month after he secured power but the BGB denied the claim, saying it untrue.
In the latest 57th BGB-BSF director general-level talks that ended on June 11 in New Delhi, BGB DG Major General Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui urged the Indian Border Security Force DG to stop pushing people into Bangladesh, follow the well-established bilateral mechanisms and protocols for the repatriation of individuals identified as Bangladeshis.
BSF DG Praveen Kumar in reply urged that all nationality verification cases pending with the Bangladesh government be completed swiftly and that their early repatriation be ensured, according to a BGB-BSF joint statement issued on June 12.
Bangladesh shares 4,156-kilometre-long border with India, of which some 180 kilometres fall on different water bodies and 79 kilometres on the Sundarban.
