Ahmedabad: Hapizabanu Begum pulled a tarpaulin sheet over her head, crouching on the wet ground as the drizzle turned to rain.

For over two months now, the 55-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal has had no roof over her head. Once a resident of Bangali Vas near Ahmedabad’s Chandola Lake, Begum now survives by begging and picking up occasional domestic work—if she’s lucky.

“They came on the 28th or 29th of April, I don’t remember the date,” she said through tears. “But there were hundreds of police and the JCBs. I can’t forget the bulldozers. We were given no proper notice. My house, my TV, my fridge—everything was destroyed.”

Begum is one among thousands of mostly Muslims unprepared for what happened on the night of 28 April 2025 to thousands of homes in a slum built along Chandola Lake here.

Just days after the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, a nationwide crackdown followed in the name of national security. In Gujarat, it took the form of a drive to identify “illegal Bangladeshis,” launched on 26 April, four days after the attack.

The Gujarat police detained at least 890 people—with locals in a court petition claiming the number was as high as 1,560 people—including 219 women and 214 children, on suspicion of being “illegal immigrants”. 

Almost all Muslims, these people were lined up, as several videos revealed, for 4 km, from a football ground to the city’s crime branch police headquarters in the Jamalpur neighbourhood, to identify Bangladeshis.

Article 14 sought comment from deputy municipal commissioner Bharat Parmar about the arbitrary nature of the demolitions of thousands of homes, given that only a few Bangladeshis were found.  He did not respond. We will update this story if he does.

Thousands Homeless

Over two months after the demolitions,we found thousands homeless, sheltering under makeshift tarpaulins tied to wooden sticks and rods, living in baseras (government shelter-homes) or moving to relatives’ homes across the city and outside. 

When it rains heavily, some families spend their nights huddled inside the stationary autorickshaws parked outside the homes of auto-drivers living in the neighbourhood across the lake area. Many children have dropped out of school, families have taken loans to survive, and a number of those homeless, especially women, desperately looking for extra jobs, such as domestic chores.

Activists said that at best, some 4,000 application forms for government-assisted new housing had been distributed. Of these, not everyone had submitted the forms because they were unsure how to or did not have the Rs 7,500 for each form. 

Many did not qualify because they could not attach the documents required for rehousing eligibility: two ID proofs dated before 2010 (ration card, driving license, voter ID, electricity bill, or birth certificate). 

If officials approve an application, then each applicant must pay Rs 300,000 for a home, along with other dues, to be delivered in monthly installments after an application is approved and housing allotted.

A total of over 12,500 homes and properties were razed in two phases of demolitions. 

Even as officials released the majority of those detained after confirming their Indian identities, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) razed their homes in the area next to the Chandola lake. 

Ajit Rajian, the deputy commissioner of police (DCP) of Ahmedabad’s crime branch told Article 14 that “230+ persons” were in detention and the “document verification process was still going on” for them. 

On the morning of April 29, authorities razed 4,000 homes and shops, as per the AMC’s own admission. 

Part of the slum near the lake, known as ‘Bangali Vas’ was a target because of the perceived presence of Bangladeshi immigrants. The Indian Express reported that at least 74 bulldozers and 200 trucks cleared 1.5 lakh sq m of land, more than the original claim of 1.25 lakh sq m.

‘Only Bengali Homes Will Be Demolished’

With her name implying origins in Haryana, Yasmin Mahboob Alimohammad Mewati, 40, a single mother of five, said she had shown birth certificates and Aadhaar cards for her daughters, proving they were born in Chandola. 

Yet, she was still detained, she said, until the entire shanty town was demolished.

“The police came in early, and by 8 am the bulldozers had arrived,” said Mewati, breaking into tears.

“They told us not to worry—‘Ghabrao nahi, khaali Bangaliyon ka makaan tootega, tum log ka nahi tootega (don’t be afraid, only the homes of Bengalis will be demolished).’ 

“But by 12:30, while I was still at the police station, I got word that my home was gone,” said Mewati. “My daughters’ birth and school certificates were buried in the rubble—I couldn’t save a thing.”

Within three weeks of the first demolitions, the second round began. 

This time, over 8,500 homes and properties were destroyed in the area beyond Bangali Vas, with 2.5 lakh sq m around the lake vacated, the Express reported. 

Mewati had borrowed Rs 4,000 from neighbours to get new Aadhaar cards, voter IDs and other documents reissued. 

On days she finds work—washing clothes or sweeping homes—she earns Rs 100 to Rs 200.

Homeless After 50 Years

Chandola Lake, a large water body in southern Ahmedabad, is flanked by the Muslim-majority neighbourhood of Danilimbda on one side and the Hindu-majority area of Isanpur on the other. 

Isanpur is primarily home to Dalit and OBC communities, such as the Devipoojak or Waghri group—among the few non-Muslim residents affected by the recent wave of demolitions. 

Yet, residents and activists alike describe the demolitions as a targeted assault on Muslim settlements.

“These communities have lived here for at least 50 years,” said Mujahid Nafees, general secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Gujarat. 

“Of all those displaced, 90% were Muslims,” said Nafees. “Yes, some non-Muslim homes were razed—perhaps 500 to 1,000—but this operation was clearly aimed at Muslims. This is the largest demolition of Muslim homes in recent history, far exceeding even Lucknow’s Akbar Nagar in scale.”

Although the Supreme Court, in a November 2024 ruling, ordered states to exercise caution against arbitrary and extra-judicial demolitions, it also included a critical exception. 

The court clarified that its protection would not apply to “unauthorised structures in any public place such as road, street, footpath, abutting railway line or any river body or water bodies,” nor to demolitions explicitly ordered by a court.

Nafees argued that this caveat has effectively enabled punitive demolitions to continue unchecked—particularly against Muslim communities.

No Rehabilitation

Displaced resident Hapizabanu Begum was born in Hasnabad village in West Bengal’s Bashirhat district. For over 22 years, she lived in Bangali Vas near Chandola Lake, Ahmedabad, with her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. 

On 29 April when the bulldozers arrived without warning, her son Imon Mohammad fled with his family. “We were terrified,” said Begum. “Who knows when the police might return to pick us up and deport us?”

According to Begum, while 500 to 700 homes in Bangali Vas belonged to Bengali-origin migrants, “only 150 to 200 were possibly Bangladeshi”. 

The rest—including those like her with Aadhaar, ration cards, voter IDs, and PAN cards—were never given a chance to prove their citizenship. 

“They didn’t even check our documents before destroying everything,” said Begum, who now lives alone under a tarpaulin sheet with other displaced women. 

She estimated that her pucca home—two rooms of plaster and bricks built with their savings over about two decades—and belongings, including a fridge, TV, and bed, were worth over Rs 150,000. Now, they are all gone.

For Begum and thousands like her, rehabilitation is out of reach. 

Gujarat’s Affordable Housing In-Participation Policy under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana allows resettlement only if the applicant proves residence before December 2010 through two separate documents. All of Begum’s official papers were made after 2010, rendering her ineligible.

Article 14 sought comment from deputy municipal commissioner Riddhesh Raval, who heads the Estate Department of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC)about how many persons applied for housing rehabilitation since the demolitions. He did not respond. We will update this story if he does.

On 20 May, the Express quoted Raval as saying that 3,600 application forms had been distributed to residents and none had yet been submitted with the required documents for rehabilitation.  

‘No Notice, No Due Process’

Senior advocate Anand Yagnik, representing displaced residents and those facing deportation, said the Gujarat High Court was still hearing the case. 

“There was no notice, no due process,” he said. “The state allowed the slum to exist for over 50 years. You can’t suddenly give people 24-48 hours and arrive with police, bulldozers, and JCBs telling them to leave in four hours.” 

Yagnik criticised the state for placing a financial burden on the poor: applying for EWS housing costs Rs 7,500, and approved applicants must pay Rs 3.5 lakh—an impossible ask for most.

Mewati, quoted earlier, said she pawned her younger daughters’ payals (anklets) and her eldest daughter’s earrings to gather the Rs 7,500 needed to file the stamp duty and application fee for a government housing rehabilitation scheme.

For 45-year-old Meena Asif Sheikh, this bureaucratic maze means permanent homelessness. “I’ve lived in Bangali Vas since I was five,” she said. “I’ve never even been to Bengal, let alone Bangladesh.” 

Her Aadhaar and ration card were issued after 2010, making her ineligible for rehabilitation. Her five children were all born in Chandola, with birth certificates and Aadhaar cards, but that did not stop authorities from razing her home.

Since then, her two adult sons, Bilal (25) and Aryan (21), have fled the area. “I told them to go. It’s not safe here—people are being detained or deported. Everyone from Bangali Vas has run away,” she said. 

Now, Sheikh tries to sell tea on the streets. “Even if I manage to earn, no one will rent to me,” she said. “The moment they hear ‘Chandola’, they assume we’re Bangladeshis.”

Detained For Speaking Bengali

Sheikh’s story echoes across the ruins of Chandola. 

With most men having fled to avoid detention, women shoulder the burden of survival. Seventy-year-old Shajahan, a resident since she was 12, saw her home flattened during a second round of demolitions on May 20. 

“They cut off our water and electricity in April. We got no notice. No time to collect our belongings,” said Shajahan. Police detained many young men from her area, including her son Salman (25), who has since gone into hiding after allegedly being beaten in police custody.

Others, like Dilmohammad Shaikh, were detained simply for being Bengali-speaking. 

A 48-year-old disabled man who came from Mumbai, Dilmohammad – whose family has roots in Odisha – was picked up by police in early May and held for three days before being released. 

“They checked all my documents to confirm I wasn’t Bangladeshi,” he said. His son Noor Mohammad (19) was also detained. Their home, worth over Rs 9 lakh, was razed. Dilmohammad had lived in Chandola for 35 years and had no links to Bengal.

Amid a rising climate of fear, the displaced of Chandola—many long-time residents with valid documents—now live under tarpaulin sheets. 

A Widening Crackdown

In February 2025, the home minister Amit Shah’s ministry issued a statement ordering “strict action” against the “entire network that assists Bangladeshi and Rohingya intruders in entering the country”.

Those caught in this crackdown have mainly been Bengali Muslims, often accused of being “foreigners” and “infiltrators”, with an especially harsh turn in Assam, where detention and deportation of Bengali-speaking Muslims is now common, as Article 14 has reported.

More recently, this suspicion has spilled across state lines—Bengali-speaking Muslims working as migrant labourers in other parts of India are increasingly being branded as Bangladeshi infiltrators, particularly in states run by the BJP.

According to a July 2025 Washington Post investigation, between 7 May and 3 July 2025, 1,880 people were deported from India to Bangladesh, as per Bangladeshi government data sources: Between 7 May to 17 June, at least 110 people were registered by Bangladesh’s border-officials as actually being Indians wrongly deported and later sent back. 

Fear & Confusion

In Chandola, fear and confusion were evident among the thousands reduced to living under tarpaulin sheets. 

In hushed conversations, residents speak of deportations and disappearances, triggered by a sweeping crackdown in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack. 

Crime Branch DCP Rajian did not respond to questions about why so many homes were demolished. Activists and lawyers have since protested about what they describe as blatant violations of due process.

“Even if some residents were Bangladeshi nationals, why was no legal process followed?” asked civil rights activist Hozefa Ujjaini, who has been working with the displaced in the Chandola area.

“We have laws—the Foreigners Act (1946), the Foreigners Tribunal Order (1964), the Passports Act (1967), and the Citizenship Act. How can anyone be deported arbitrarily?”

Ujjaini cited the case of 51-year-old Liyakat Ali, a mentally ill man from Barabanki district in eastern Uttar Pradesh, who has been missing since 26 April. 

That day, residents were reportedly rounded up, paraded through the streets, and detained. Two weeks later, on 8 May, Scroll reported that 78 undocumented migrants from Bangladesh—detained in Ahmedabad—were flown out on a military aircraft and cast into riverine waters along the Bangladesh border.

Ujjaini believes Ali was among those wrongfully deported.

“His family kept all his identity documents because of his condition. But once he was taken by the police, no one could trace him,” said Ujjaini. “We filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court, and we’re now considering moving the Supreme Court.”

A July 2025 Scroll story also corroborated the deportation of a mentally ill man from Ahmedabad believed to be Indian.

Attempts To Deport Indians

Senior lawyer Anand Yagnik echoed these concerns, citing another case in which an Indian Muslim woman who spoke fluent Gujarati was nearly deported along with her 13-year-old son and husband.

“They were among 300 people being pushed across the Bangladesh border from a BSF camp,” said Yagnik, who is preparing a petition in her case. “In the chaos, she managed to avoid being sent across and returned to Agartala. Her husband and son weren’t so lucky.” 

“Push-back” or “Push across” are official terms for an informal process of deportation, in which India’s Border Security Force (BSF) takes deportees to an unguarded stretch of the border and forces them, often at gunpoint, to cross into Bangladesh.  

These “push-backs” abandon India’s legal process: no cases are filed against suspected illegals, they are not produced before a magistrate, and there are no official hearings regarding their citizenship.

Yagnik pointed to a pattern: Indian Muslims, especially those poor and Bengali-speaking, being falsely labelled as Bangladeshi and deported without evidence or court orders. 

“There’s no way to verify if those being deported are actually undocumented immigrants,” he said. “And every single person who’s been detained in this dragnet has been brutally beaten.”

“When we have the Foreigners Act, the Passport Act, the Citizenship Act, and above all, the Constitution of India—how can anyone deport people without due process?” said Yagnik. 

Articles 14 (equality before the law), 21 (right to life and personal liberty), and 22 (protection against arrest and detention in certain cases) of the Constitution applied equally to citizens and non-citizens,” said Yagnik. “The police cannot deport people without orders from a competent court,” he said. “And in these cases, there are no such orders.”

Nowhere To Go

When we met her in the Siasat Nagar area of Chandola, 25-year-old Shabana Akbar Sheikh was nursing her five-year-old son. Then, a heavy rain poured down on the tarpaulin sheet that now serves as the only shelter for her family of four.

Despite being born and raised in Chandola, living, working, and raising her children there, Shabana’s home was among the many that were demolished.

“It was a pucca house with tiles, easily worth Rs 7 lakh,” said Shabana. “It was our life’s savings, we were not even given time to take our belongings. My children’s clothes, our utensils, a bed, all of it has been reduced to rubble.”

“We managed to save one cot—the one you’re sitting on now,” she added. “Since it’s raining heavily nowadays, at night we take our children and sit inside one of the auto-rickshaws parked on the road, so that the kids can get some sleep.”

Her husband, Akbar Sheikh, used to earn Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 ironing clothes, but his equipment was destroyed when their home was demolished on 20 May. The couple said they needed at least Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 to rent a new home.

“On top of that, people are also not renting to anyone from Chandola,” said Shabana. “The very mention of Chandola now makes them see us with suspicion, as illegal or Bangladeshi. Chandole ka naam sunke hi log bolte hai yeh log Bangladeshi hai, inko makaan nahi dene ka.” 

“We tried, we arranged for some money and actually gave a deposit and then when they heard Chandola, they returned the deposit,” said Shabana.

Since the first round of demolitions on 29 April, electricity and water connections were cut off until the second demolitions in May. Shabana noted how they had had a “meter, water and electricity connection for decades. Why would we have all this, if this was illegally encroached land?”

Shabana pointed to a temple near her. “Why did they not demolish this mandir right next to our property?” she said. “Why did they demolish some 10-11 masjids and dargahs on our side?”

Interrupted Education, Livelihood

Like many others, Shabana said officials did not ask for domicile proof—Aadhar, voter IDs or ration cards. 

“They just arrived one morning, told us to vacate the premises and take our children along,” she said. “Then they demolished the place.”

Shabana’s two children, aged 11 and 5, no longer attend school because their uniforms, books, and supplies were lost in the demolition—and the family can no longer afford the tuition fees.

Other families shared similar stories of their children’s interrupted education and vanished livelihoods.

Opening a parcel of leftover hotel food, Mewati pointed to the vegetable and described her struggles to find domestic work.

“My three younger daughters were studying in Jamalpur government school, but their education has come to a halt,” she said wearily. 

“I have no in-laws, no one to help,” she said. “I’ve raised all my girls on my own. Now, I’ve had to send the younger ones to stay with their married sisters—it's not safe for them to sleep out in the open like this.”

Yet her daughters’ futures, like those of thousands of other local Muslims displaced from Chandola, are in limbo.

“I do not have any money to send my kids on a tempo to their school, to buy new uniforms for Sania, Sameera and Saiba,” said Mewati. 

“What hope can I have?” she said. “What am I supposed to do, how can I even think about a new house, when I don’t even know where I’m sleeping for the night?”

(Sabah Gurmat is an independent journalist and writer based in New Delhi)

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