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On June 1, 2026, ten people, men, women and children, were stranded in No Man’s Land near the Benapol border after Border Guard Bangladesh stopped an attempted pushback by India’s Border Security Force (BSF). They were suspected to be illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. But for an entire day and night, they remained trapped between two states, accepted by neither side, until the BSF finally agreed to allow them to return to India.

That image should disturb every citizen. An international border is meant to mark sovereignty. It should not become a space where human beings are left without rights, nationality or remedy. India has every right to secure its frontier with Bangladesh, prevent illegal entry, stop trafficking networks and act against forged documents. But no democracy can defend its border by suspending due process at the border.

The danger is not abstract. Last year, Awal Sekh, a migrant worker from Murshidabad and an Indian citizen, was detained in a Chennai holding centre for nearly a year under suspicion of being Bangladeshi. He was eventually released after the Madras High Court intervened. But a year of lost liberty cannot be returned by a release order. His case shows how administrative suspicion can become punishment when citizenship is judged by language, class or place of origin.

The case of Sunali Khatun is even more alarming. A pregnant Bengali migrant worker was reportedly sent to Bangladesh under suspicion of being Bangladeshi, triggering a legal battle that travelled from the Calcutta high court to the Supreme Court. Her case exposed a frightening reality that a poor migrant can be uprooted first and heard later. When the state acts before it verifies, citizenship itself becomes insecure.

These cases must be read in the context of the “Detect, Delete, Deport” policy,........

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