India’s Pushback Policy in 2025: Legal Violations and Humanitarian Crisis at the Assam-Bangladesh Border

On May 10, 2025, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters at a press briefing in Guwahati that the Indian government had now adopted a “push back” policy for undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh and Rohingya refugees. The announcement came amid reports in Bangladeshi media that the Assam government and the Border Security Force (BSF) had “pushed in” hundreds of undocumented persons into Bangladesh, including 78 in the Sundarbans area. Sarma further revealed that inmates of the Matia transit camp in Assam’s Goalpara district who were convicted foreign nationals (CFN) were among those pushed back into Bangladesh. CFNs are those who have been convicted under the Foreigners Act, 1946, for either entering India without travel documents or overstaying visas.

In essence, the Assam Chief Minister’s claims suggest that two groups of undocumented individuals were deported or sent back to Bangladesh—one, those trying to enter India through the border; and two, those already inside India, including CFNs housed at the detention facility in the State. The second group also purportedly includes undocumented Bengali-speaking individuals and Rohingya refugees in different Indian States, including Delhi and Gujarat, who are being rounded up as part of a larger crackdown on so-called “illegal infiltrators”.

These developments have also been accompanied by a more sinister report that the Indian government apprehended some 40 Rohingya refugees from Delhi, flew them to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and dropped them at sea near the coast of southeastern Myanmar. These forced returns were reportedly undertaken in a Trump-like manner, with the deportees handcuffed and blindfolded through their journey.

Also Read | In transit for eternity: Assam’s detention camps and the fate of the stateless

While the Supreme Court, while hearing a petition against the forced deportations at sea, has questioned the veracity of the reports, the United Nations-appointed Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, has announced an inquiry into the “unconscionable, unacceptable acts”. He has also urged the Indian government to refrain from inhumane and life-threatening treatment of Rohingya refugees, including their repatriation into perilous conditions in Myanmar.

A dangerous policy

During the press briefing, Sarma categorically asserted that the Indian government would now completely bypass the legal system while dealing with undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers and directly deport them to their countries of origin. He termed the exercise as an “operation”, adding a militaristic veneer to rationalise its existence outside civil law.

This is a dangerous approach that violates Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which extends the right to equal protection of the law to everyone residing within Indian territory, including foreigners. Even undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers deserve the benefit of due process to ensure that they are not unfairly treated by the host government, such as by being arbitrarily detained or deported without any formal procedure.

This process is designed not just to create space for humanitarian considerations, especially for asylum-seekers, but also to ensure that no genuine Indian citizen is mistakenly detained or deported to a foreign country. By skirting the legal framework, the Indian government is formalising a system that might end up creating illegal foreigners out of thin air, and worse, forcibly deporting Indian citizens to foreign countries. In fact, media reports suggest that among those recently deported to Bangladesh were three Indian citizens. So far, such arbitrariness has been writ large under Assam’s quasi-judicial Foreigners Tribunal regime. Now, it may see a countrywide application.

Contrary to Sarma’s assertion that pushback is a “new innovation”, the practice has a much longer history in Indian state practice. As the scholar Rizwana Shamshad observes in her book Bangladeshi Migrants in India: Foreigners, Refugees or Infiltrators?, the term “pushback” first appeared in official records in 1989 when the then Union Home Minister under the Congress government, P. Chidambaram, told Parliament that the BSF had pushed back 35,131 “Bangladeshi infiltrators” through the Assam, Tripura and West Bengal borders. However, scrutiny of parliamentary records show that the term appeared even earlier—in 1979, when then Minister of State for Home Affairs, Dhanik Lal Mandal, told Parliament that the BSF had pushed back “members of the minority community as also majority community who infiltrated in [sic] India”.

Bangladeshi nationals allegedly found living illegally in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, being sent to West Bengal for deportation on May 14, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PTI

In 1992, the P.V. Narasimha Rao-led Congress government at the Centre, under pressure from an ascendant BJP, rounded up hundreds of so-called “illegal Bangladeshis” from Delhi and forcibly sent them to Bangladesh through the West Bengal border. The whole drive was named “Operation Pushback”, leaving no room for interpretation on what it was. Official records and statements show that the policy continued in different forms with inconsistent frequency through the subsequent decades under different governments.

In 2011, for example, then Minister of State for Home Affairs under the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Mullapally Ramachandran, told Parliament that the BSF undertook deportations through the “‘push back’ mode” if the identities of the alleged “illegal Bangladeshis” could not be verified within 30 days. More recently, in 2017, months after anti-Rohingya violence hit Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the BSF announced that it was raising five additional battalions just to “push back” Rohingya refugees from India’s borders.

According to Smruti S. Pattanaik, a Bangladesh expert at the Manohar Parrikar-Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis (MP-IDSA), India adopted the pushback policy “in the absence of [a] bilateral agreement which lays down the procedure for deportation and given the position of the Bangladesh government on the issue”. While Dhaka has persistently refused to acknowledge the presence of undocumented Bangladeshi nationals in India, both sides mutually agreed to shove the issue under the table for most part of the last decade to maintain warm bilateral relations. In fact, in 2019, then Bangladesh Foreign Minister, A.K. Abdul Momen, categorically deniedthe existence of a “pushback” policy on India’s part, despite official records indicating otherwise. This allowed India to quietly continue pushing back people at the border without much political ballyhoo.

Detained Bangladeshi migrants at a crime branch office following an overnight operation by the police in Ahmedabad on April 26, 2025. Over 1,000 “migrants” were rounded up in a sweeping crackdown in Gujarat aimed at identifying and deporting illegal residents, the State government said on April 26.
| Photo Credit:
SAM PANTHAKY/AFP

However, with the dramatic change in government in Dhaka in 2024, this mutual understanding may be fraying at the edges. India’s renewed pushback policy, which appears to be more forceful, systematic and covert than before, could antagonise the new administration, which is not exactly India-friendly. It could create conditions for Bangladeshi border guards to use lethal force against border-crossers to deter what they see as “push-ins”. Sarma’s latest announcement, by giving a more formal edge to the pushback policy and bringing it to the forefront of the political discourse, does not help. It gives Dhaka a ground to accuse India of subterfuge at the borders and violating Bangladesh’s sovereignty by sending people across without authorisation or verification. In fact, comments made recently by senior Bangladeshi officials, including Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain, indicate that Dhaka is unhappy with India’s latest pushbacks.

Legal transgressions

The moot question here is—what is the legal basis of India’s pushback policy at the borders? While India, as a sovereign state, has the right to remove undocumented foreigners from its territory, it must follow the due process. For undocumented migrants who are convicted under the Foreigners Act, 1946, returns must be undertaken in close consultation with the country of origin.

This means that the origin country would have to first verify and approve the return list relayed by the host country through official diplomatic channels. India and Bangladesh share an extradition treaty, which lays down a set of operational guidelines for the transfer of individuals accused of crimes in either territory. But, they do not have a formal deportation treaty that lays down specific guidelines and norms on transfer of large groups of undocumented migrants. Therefore, bilateral consultations become even more crucial. Notably, Bangladeshi authorities have shown willingness to coordinate repatriation of legitimate Bangladeshi citizens through the border. But, India’s latest pushbacks have been unilateral.

Such unilateral forced deportations of undocumented individuals risk putting the lives of the deportees at risk. The origin country, in this case Bangladesh, may refuse to accept them as their citizens, thus leaving them stateless and at the mercy of law enforcement authorities. In fact, once deported, they may be detained again by Bangladesh on charges of crossing the border illegally.

Many undocumented migrants are also victims of human trafficking and forced returns could throw them back into the hands of traffickers. The UN Global Compact on Migration, which India signed in 2018, stipulates that countries protect such victims of trafficking and refrain from deporting them “regardless of their migration status”. India’s pushback policy violates this norm. It also arguably dilutes India’s own constitutional guarantee of “right to life”, which applies to everyone residing in Indian territory.

Even for asylum-seekers, such as the Rohingya, India must undertake deportations only after bilateral consultations. In a 2021 order on deportation of Rohingya refugees, the Supreme Court of India asserted that deportations cannot happen “unless the procedure prescribed for such deportation is followed”. The latest pushbacks, let alone the reported abandonment of Rohingya refugees at sea near Myanmar, do not seem to have followed any formal procedure.

Repatriation of asylum-seekers, as per the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), must be voluntary, safe and dignified. One may argue that as a non-signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Optional Protocol, India is not obligated to follow these norms. But, the principle of non-refoulement, which is the obligation of a state to not return a person to a territory where they may be exposed to persecution, is part of customary international law. This means that India must uphold the principle as a member of the UN General Assembly, which is the parent body of the UNHCR.

Police stand guard as bulldozers are used to raze a settlement of alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in Ahmedabad on April 29, 2025. The police detained over 1,000 “Bangladeshi migrants” in a sweeping crackdown in Gujarat with the aim of deporting people living there illegally, the State government said April 26.
| Photo Credit:
SAM PANTHAKY/AFP

The principle is also enshrined in Article III of the “Bangkok Principles on Status and Treatment of Refugees 2001”, which India has signed without any reservation to that particular provision. It also appears clearly in Clause 87 of the UN Global Compact on Refugees, a global instrument that India signed in 2018. While the Rohingyas face the most persecution and violence in Myanmar, they are increasingly at risk of xenophobic discrimination, gang violence and state-imposed restrictions in Bangladesh.

Rohingya refugees in southeastern Bangladesh’s camps are also being reportedly forced to join armed groups fighting the junta and Arakan Army (AA) in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Many of them are choosing to instead flee to Southeast Asian countries by embarking on deadlysea voyages arranged by human traffickers. By callously pushing them back to Bangladesh, India may be sending the Rohingya into harm’s way.

Amid the politics, diplomatese, and legality of these forced returns, we must not lose sight of a more fundamental pathology that they represent—a tragic perversion of India’s humanitarian ethos and legacy of hospitality towards the weak and marginalised.

This distortion must be placed within the ideological remit of a Hindutva state, which constantly seeks to sanitise the social landscape by getting rid of undesirable others. The Union Home Minister’s labelling of undocumented Bangladeshis as “‘termites” in 2018 reflects how this process may be akin to pest control, meant to keep the house clean, hygienic and orderly.

Here, the body of the Muslim outsider, particularly the Bengali-speaking Muslim outsider, emerges as the pest. In Agambenian terms, this body is the homo sacer, a figure that may not be killed, but is also not worthy of saving. The sovereign has absolute power over this body, which is why it can pluck it out of its home at whim, shackle it, blindfold it, put it into a military transport aircraft, and drop it at sea or a mangrove inhabited by man-eating tigers.

Alternatively, the sovereign can just leave it at the border and direct them to walk past the no-man’s-land into a highly militarised frontier. This is precisely the case at the India-Bangladesh border where forced returns could wreak havoc. Not only would the deportees be at risk of unwarranted aggression by Bangladeshi border guards, even if by misunderstanding, some of them could also end up homeless and pauperised if their residential addresses cannot be verified.

Worse, if there are genuine Indian citizens among the deportees, they would effectively end up in an alien land with no family, friends or support networks. Some of the deportees, especially those sent back from Assam’s transit camp, may also be suffering from serious mental health problems, including memory loss. Once deported to Bangladesh, they could slip into an even darker existential abyss, without anyone to support them.

Also Read | Myanmar refugees in Manipur: Caught between war and lies

It is this human fallout that lies at the core of what appears to be an unusually belligerent forced return policy of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the Sarma government in Assam. This cruelty-as-state-policy has a political premium for the ruling party, even as it prepares the ground for crucial State elections in Bihar and Assam.

It serves to reinvigorate the Hindutva social base and its ethnonationalist fantasies of creating the perfect Hindu nation with airtight borders and a racially pure demography. This sociopolitical project is transformative, but in the most macabre way—it transforms India into a nation that disposes of live human bodies at remote and perilous frontiers without the slightest care about their wellbeing.

Angshuman Choudhury is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Asian Studies jointly at the National University of Singapore and King’s College London.