Residents of Gurugram are receiving frantic messages from their employees, who are migrant workers from West Bengal, claiming that they are being threatened with eviction by landlords amid the police’s ongoing verification drive aimed at identifying and deporting Bangladeshi nationals staying illegally in the city.
Ruchika Sethi, a social worker, said she received a distress call on July 29 from a woman working as a domestic help in her housing society.
The woman, who hails from a village in West Bengal’s Malda district and has been residing in the city’s Tigra area for the past 12 years, alleged that a few police officers and her landlord, who belongs to the Gujjar community, visited her building at midnight and threatened her and two other Bengali families with dire consequences if they failed to vacate their rented accommodation within a day.
‘Vacate by August 10’
Ms. Sethi said the domestic help was later given time till August 10 to vacate her house. “Those living in pucca houses were given time till August 10, while those residing in shanties have been asked to vacate by August 2,” she said.
