00:00This is my father, my mother, and that's me.
00:04Moifadul Islam doesn't have much, but he has his documents.
00:09He's been through a verification before,
00:12and his family is listed on a citizen register in his home state of Assam.
00:17Yet, two weeks ago, police picked him up from where he lives in this slum in the middle of the night.
00:25I didn't get to ask any questions. They didn't let us talk.
00:28They didn't even ask us if we had our IDs or not. They just arrested us.
00:32What can we do? And then they threatened us and scared us.
00:37The tech and finance city of Gurgram depends on the labour of migrants like Moifadul.
00:44Recently, police have reportedly detained hundreds like him and Akhtar Rusek on suspicion of being Bangladeshi.
00:52They made me strip to my underwear. They said they'll just look at my documents and let me go.
00:56I showed them so many papers, even documents from my grandfather's grandfather.
01:01They said, no, you're Bangladeshi. You've forged these.
01:06Both men say they were held for a week.
01:08The police here did not want to speak to us on camera,
01:11but they did say that they have been detaining only suspected Bangladeshis
01:14and that any Indians with legitimate documents have nothing to fear.
01:18They denied anybody was held for more than three or four days and they said nobody was ill-treated.
01:23They also claimed that they did identify Bangladeshis who they will now deport
01:27and that this verification drive will continue.
01:31Mukul Sheikh has spent the last weeks visiting scared family members of those detained
01:35and trying to reassure those who have just been released.
01:39He rejects the police narrative and says in the 25 years he's lived here since leaving West Bengal,
01:46he's never seen anything like this.
01:49Is it a crime to be a Muslim and a Bengali speaker?
01:53Why are they only questioning the poor?
01:55There are well-off people from West Bengal too.
01:58Why don't they raid their homes and arrest them?
02:01The educated can defend themselves so they won't question them.
02:05They'll only target the poor.
02:06Most domestic, sanitation and daily wage workers in the city are Bengali-speaking migrants.
02:14Since the detentions began, many have fled in fear,
02:18leaving the city sitting in its own trash.
02:24Will the educated do their own dirty work?
02:27Only the poor clean houses.
02:30Now as all the workers leave, people will find out what happens in a week's time
02:34when all the trash piles up.
02:41Both Moifuddin and Akhtaru will remain.
02:44There's no work at home to provide for their families.
02:47So they stay, even at the risk of being detained again.
02:52I feel really sad.
02:54I was born here and they call me Bhagnadeshi.
02:57They picked up a Hindu man in front of me, saw his name and let him go.
03:03They told him to go on his way.
03:05But when they heard my Muslim name, they detained me.
03:07Akhtaru says he drew up alongside Hindus hearing their hymns.
03:23He sometimes sings them outside temples to earn tips.
03:26He says Indians are brothers and should not allow the authorities to divide them.
03:35They say it.
03:37He says if you know it, they're not gone from.
03:37Hey, hey.
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