The Government Railway Police (GRP) on Tuesday detained eight Bangladeshi nationals at Assam’s New Bongaigaon Railway Station for allegedly entering India illegally and attempting to travel to Chennai for work, police officials said.
The detainees—identified as Babu Sheikh, Ashraful Haque, Alamin Ali, Mamun Sheikh, Mohammad Ali, Rahul Amin, Musharraf Ali, and Asharul Haque—are all residents of Jamalpur district in central Bangladesh and aged between 19 and 22, according to police..
During initial interrogation, the men admitted they had crossed into India illegally through the porous India-Bangladesh border in Meghalaya, allegedly by walking through hilly terrain and a broken fencing area. They claimed to have paid ₹9,000 each to a cross-border racket to facilitate their entry.
“All eight of us walked across the hills last evening and crossed the border through a broken fence. We were headed to Chennai for work and had paid money to some agents,” one of the detainees told reporters at the station on Tuesday morning.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Mohanlal Meena said the group had planned to board a train to Chennai from Bongaigaon. “They had fake documents in their possession, including Aadhaar cards and voter IDs. One of the eight individuals had earlier stayed in India for nearly a year and appears to be fluent in Hindi, Tamil, and Assamese. He is suspected to have led the group,” Meena said.
The SSP added that the individual in question had obtained multiple Indian identity documents under false pretenses and told police that securing such forged papers was not difficult.
The GRP has registered a case, and the suspects are being interrogated. Their identities and immigration status are being verified in coordination with central intelligence and border security agencies.
Authorities suspect the involvement of a broader human trafficking or illegal migration network and have launched an investigation into possible facilitators on both sides of the border.
SSP Meena further noted that the arrested individuals were found mingling with local migrant workers from Assam who were returning home from Delhi, Gurugram, and nearby areas following intensified crackdowns in those regions.
“While the returning workers are Indian nationals, these eight suspects were hiding among them at the station. Acting on specific intelligence inputs, GRP conducted a search operation and detained them,” Meena added.
All eight individuals remain in GRP custody, and further legal action is underway.
