Detentions and torture of Bengali migrants increasing: Mamata

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday (July 24, 2025) said that she has been increasingly receiving reports of detentions of and atrocities on Bengali-speaking people hailing from different districts of West Bengal in Gurgaon, Haryana.

Ms. Banejee added that she has received reports from other States such as Rajasthan about illegal “pushbacks” of West Bengal citizens with all proper documents to Bangladesh.

“There are tortures and tortures on hapless poor Bengali workers from West Bengal in these States. I am shocked to see these terrible atrocities of double-engine governments on Bengalis in India,” she said on social media.

The Trinamool Congress chairperson asked what does the Union government want to prove? “This is atrocious and terrible. We are not going to tolerate this. Stop this linguistic terror,” Ms. Banerjee added.

Earlier on July 21, during her party’s Martyr’s Day Rally, the Chief Minister had announced a ‘Language Movement’ to protest against the targeting of West Bengal migrants.

“If required, there will be another language movement against the BJP’s terrorism on the Bengali language… From July 27, a movement will start in Bengal in protest against the attack on Bengalis, Bengali language and ‘Bhasha santras’ (linguistic terrorism),” Ms. Banerjee had said. The Chief Minister said that about 1,000 migrants from the State have been either detained or pushed back into Bangladesh.

There have been reports of migrants being detained in Odisha, Haryana and Delhi. Some migrants from the State have been pushed into Bangladesh. On Thursday (July 24, 2025), women from Harishchandrapur in Malda held protests against harassment of migrants from the State. The protesters included both Hindu and Muslim women who raised slogans against the alleged atrocities of migrants from the area working in Haryana.