A Bengali couple has been languishing in jail after going to Karnataka for work. Their one-and-a-half-year-old son is also in custody. The Hindu Bengali couple was arrested by the Bengaluru police in Karnataka allegedly on suspicion of being Bangladeshi infiltrators. Palash Adhikari and Shukla Adhikari have been spending their days in a jail in Bengaluru with their baby Adi for almost three months.

Palash’s father, Pankaj Adhikari, and mother, Savita Adhikari, went to Bengaluru after getting the news. They showed the police all citizenship proofs for their son and daughter-in-law. But they are complaining that it did not help. In this situation, the elderly parents have requested the intervention of West Bengal’s administration to release their son, daughter-in-law, and grandson from jail in the state of Karnataka.

Palash is a permanent resident of Tele village in the Jougram panchayat area of Jamalpur police station in Purba Bardhaman. If anyone sees their broken house with two huts, it can be easily understood that poverty is a constant companion of that family. In fact, most of the people in the area earn their livelihood by doing hard labor. Some people make mattresses; others earns money by tying beedis. Palash, a resident of such an area, went to Bengaluru with his wife and son in the hope of earning extra income.

Palash lived with his family and neighbour Sunil Adhikari in a house in the Sulibela area of Varthur police station, in the Marathahalli subdivision of Bengaluru. They started working for a daily wage of Rs 300–400.

They used to collect waste material (paper, plastic, etc.) lying in different places, including hotels, restaurants, and cinema halls, and deposit it in one place. According to Anandabazar’s report, the police raided Palash’s house in Bengaluru on July 27. Police assumed that all those who spoke Bengali were ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’. They arrested seven people, including Palash, and took them to the police station.

The neighbour was released, but Palash and his wife were arrested. Palash’s aged parents claim that the police may have detained their son and daughter-in-law because of the language problem. In the words of Palash’s father, “We were having language problems in talking to the police there. Just as they could not understand us, we could not understand anything they said. Again and again, we told them that we are Indians…residents of Burdwan, West Bengal.”

A resident of Bainchigram in Hooghly, Sujan Halder is a relative of Palash. He said, “I went to Bangalore after knowing about the pathetic condition of Palash, his wife, and his child. But I couldn’t solve anything. The lawyer they have appointed is not showing that kind of cooperation”.

Jamalpur BDO Shubhankar Majumdar said, “I have heard about such an incident. The district administration has been informed of the matter. The SDO (Burdwan South) is looking into the matter.”

Jamalpur Assembly MLA Alok Maji said, “Palash and his family are permanent residents and voters of Tele village in my assembly constituency. They also have all the proof of their Indian citizenship. Despite this, it is surprising on what grounds the Bengaluru police detained them.”

Why do Hindus always get the short end of the stick in our Republic?

It is a telling sign of the dysfunction in our secular state that while illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators are showered with all kinds of facilities, get priority hearings in Supreme Court, and get all their paperwork processed with aid of political parties like AIUDF, AIMIM, AAP, TMC, Congress etc., Hindu migrants are arbitrarily detained and left to fend for themselves even in a BJP-ruled state.

Hindu society also needs to introspect on why no socio-religious organization came to the aid of this poor couple, at the very least to solve their language barrier issues in dealing with police. Even assuming that police has genuine apprehensions about their true identity (illegal Bangladeshi Muslims have a well-oiled network to create fake Hindu identity papers), why not at least give them bail seeing that they have a small child?

Why aren’t any activists banging on judiciary’s doors? Lutyens’ lawyers and FCRA NGOs went into overdrive to get bail for a dangerous Islamist instigator like Md. Zubair, and SC entertained them with multiple hearings in a matter of days, but those self-declared champions of human rights have gone missing now.

Bangladeshi Hindu refugees have been similarly suffering and languishing in Assam’s NRC detention camps for over 3 years now due to our Republic’s apathy, some even driven to commit suicide. Pakistani Hindu refugees are similarly suffering in camps in Delhi, Jodhpur etc – ultimately, few of them gave up hope and returned to the same Islamofascist nation from where they had fled.

Framing of rules for CAA implementation has been delayed multiple times by the Union Home Ministry, while SC takes it own sweet time over the dozens of petitions filed by the Lutyens’ lobby and Islamist organizations against this much-needed humanitarian law.