Calcutta High Court questions Bilaspur detention of four Muslim voters amid pending appeals
The Calcutta High Court challenged the Bilaspur officer’s decision to detain four Muslim men from Murshidabad while their appeals against electoral-roll deletion were still before West Bengal’s SIR tribunal.
During a Monday hearing, the Calcutta High Court examined the actions of a foreign registration officer in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, who detained four Muslim men from Murshidabad on accusations of illegal Bangladeshi origin. Justice Krishna Rao questioned the logic of declaring the men non-Indian while their appeals against removal from the electoral roll during the special intensive revision were still before West Bengal’s appellate tribunal.
The detainees—Nasiruddin Sheikh, Laltu Sheikh, Safikul Islam and Sabir Sheikh—have been held for more than a month and claim inclusion in the 2002 voter list and participation in the May state elections. The court found the parallel proceedings contradictory and instructed that the officer be made a respondent and provide a report on the arrests. The case will be revisited on October 8.
Earlier, 23 individuals were seized on September 4; 19 were released after verification, leaving the four still in custody. The People’s Union of Civil Liberties has criticized the detentions as lacking show-cause notices, amid a broader government drive to verify suspected undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Why it matters
It underscores legal conflicts over citizenship verification and voter-list removals affecting minority groups in India.
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