Guwahati: While a large number of Bangladeshi nationals live illegally in India with impunity, supported by a section of the polity, Assam Police arrested 31 illegal infiltrators from their country at the Guwahati railway station on Monday.

Suleman Kuddus, among the arrested, said that many of his fellow Bangladeshis enter India every day by crossing the international border. It is a continuous process, he said.

Suleman, living in Delhi for the past two decades, helped Bangladeshis enter India. He said that over 1 crore Bangladeshi people are illegally residing in Delhi, Bengaluru and other parts of the country.

The process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is going on in Assam to identify infiltrators residing in the state. The complete draft of the NRC was published on July 30, which excluded over 40 lakh people of the 3.29 crore applicants.

Assam Police arrested 31 Bangladeshi nationals including 10 men, 8 women, 8 boys and 5 girls at the Guwahati railway station on Monday while they were coming from Bengaluru to Guwahati by Bengaluru Express. They had spent the previous night at Guwahati railway station platform.

The infiltrators were planning to board in Kanchanjangha Express to go to Bangladesh via Agartala when they were arrested.

An Assam Police official Iftikhar Ali said that on Monday at around 10 am, police had detained some suspicious people at the Guwahati railway station. During the police interrogation, he said, they revealed that they were originally from Bangladesh.

“They were coming from Bengaluru and planning to board the Kanchanjangha Express to go to Agartala,” the Assam cop said.

The Assam cop further said that they had illegally entered India some years ago and went to Bengaluru for some petty work. These Bangladeshis crossed over to India by crossing the fenced border with the help of some agents.

To access all facilities in India, the Bangladeshis had paid Rs 3,000-4,000 to the agents.

Suleman, who has an Indian voter card, an Aadhaar card and a passbook of an Indian bank said that he had cast his vote in Delhi at every election since 1990.

The arrested Bangladeshi nationals have been identified as Md Suleman Kuddus, Md Jamal, Shimul, Sabina, Sakebol, Salma, Hassan, Hussain, Masum, Minara Khatun, Abdul Mijanur, Masuma Khatun, Dulal Mia, Hanufa Begum, Md Hanif, Moriam Begum, Aalam Khan, Md Jahagir, Aesha Begum, Jannalu Firdus, Md Jahangir, Md Arif, Md Babu, Md Shar Alom, Shahinur Akhtar, Md Suhel, Muchalafa, Md Raju Hawladar, Md Hussain Bayate, Hassan Biswas, Tajinur Begum and Shiuli Begum.

Recently, the NDA government and BJP president Amit Shah have said categorically that every illegal migrant from Bangladesh would be made to leave India and that the BJP-led union government would identify every illegal Bangladeshi and deport all of them.