Murshidabad (West Bengal): On the night of December 20, Juel Rana, a 20-year-old migrant worker from Chakbahadurpur village in West Bengal’s Murshidabad, stopped answering his phone in Sambalpur, Odisha. His family knew something had gone terribly wrong.Juel Rana had left Chakbahadurpur village district to work as a mason, another young man pushed out by shrinking rural wages and the collapse of steady local employment. He did not return alive.According to his family, a group of men confronted him, demanded to know why a “Bangladeshi” had come there, and assaulted him with iron rods and sharp weapons, striking his head until he collapsed. His sister Tumpa Khatun recalled the night to The Wire, “A group with covered faces and saffron headbands came at night and asked, ‘Why has a Bangladeshi come here?’ They beat him to death. He was just 20… What is our fault? Should we not go outside Bengal?”Juel Rana. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.An FIR was subsequently registered under Sections 103(2), 108(2), and 109(3)(5) of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), and six people were arrested. Juel’s body was brought back to Chakbahadurpur village, plunging the area into grief and fury. He is survived by his father and two sisters, one younger than him. His father, Jiaul Haque, a mason working in Kerala, returned home to bury his son.Symbol of a widening crisisHaque summed up the impossible choice facing thousands of families in Murshidabad, “Here wages are Rs 250, there Rs 500. But you only get work maybe two days a week on average. There’s been no government work for nearly ten years. What should we do? We go knowing we may die. We can’t change our name, identity, or language.”Rana’s killing is being read far beyond Chakbahadurpur as a crime with a political vocabulary – the words “Bangladeshi” or “Rohingya” being used not as a legal category, but as an accusation that strips poor Bengali-speaking workers of legitimacy and safety.In that sense, his death is not being treated as an isolated case. For migrant workers from West Bengal, it has become a symbol of a widening crisis, where economic survival increasingly comes at the cost of physical safety, dignity and even citizenship.Just weeks before Rana’s death, Ruhul Islam, a hawker from Sagarpara, was attacked in Odisha’s Ganjam district by a mob chanting “Jai Shri Ram.” This followed a pattern of escalating hostility. Months earlier, thousands of workers from Malda and Murshidabad fled Odisha after being targeted solely for being “Bengali.” Many, like Sujon Sarkar, who was stripped and beaten, eventually left the state again in pursuit of a better livelihood.Juel Rana’s two sisters. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.A home ministry circular that started it allIn 2025, the implementation of a Union home ministry circular regarding the verification of “suspected Bangladeshis” fundamentally altered the legal and social landscape for Bengali-speaking migrant workers across India. The May 2, 2025, home ministry letter authorised inter-state verification and the detention of suspected illegal immigrants. While aimed at national security, this policy catalysed a wave of profiling against poor migrant labourers from West Bengal working in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Gurgaon.“This started about a year ago. We had never seen anything like this before,” alleged Asarul Sheikh, a hawker from Beldanga who works in Jharkhand. “A group wearing saffron tilaks abused us as Bangladeshis. Even when we showed Aadhaar cards, they said Bengalis and Bangladeshis are the same. If you’re Muslim, they start beating you immediately.”The “Bangladeshi” label, repeatedly amplified by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in the political discourse, has moved beyond its legal meaning to become a racialised slur, one that migrant workers say is routinely used to legitimise profiling, assaults and even lynchings. In the current climate, the Bengali language and the Muslim faith have become markers of an “outsider” within their own country.The consequences were immediate. Following the circular, a group of workers from Murshidabad in Mumbai were detained and pushed back into Bangladesh. They eventually managed to return home, only to head back out to other states after a few days of recovery.One of them, Manirul Khan from Hariharpara, said, “Of course, we are afraid, but the fear of hunger is even greater if we sit at home. What can we do? There is no other option. Those of us who work outside earn on average between Rs 40,000-Rs60,000 a month. If we work harder, we earn even more. Who will pay us that kind of money in our own state?”In a landmark case in December 2025, the Supreme Court ordered the return of Sunali Khatun, a heavily pregnant Bengali woman, and her nine-year-old child, after they were deported to Bangladesh following a police sweep in a Delhi slum. Sunali has since given birth to a boy, but the child’s father and four others, including Sweety Bibi, remain in jail.Sunali Khatun, Sweety Baby and their family members pushed into Bangladesh. Sunali and her minor son have returned to India following the SC order. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.Between May and July 2025, human rights groups documented thousands of Bengali-speaking people detained or targeted as suspected “illegal Bangladeshis” across BJP-ruled states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra. Lawmakers across party lines from the state alleged their efforts to raise the issue in the parliament were stalled. “Bengali-speaking workers are facing harassment in different states. When I tried to raise the issue during the last Winter Session of Parliament, the Speaker did not allow it. A worker from my district was detained in Rajasthan and pushed into Bangladesh. I had to intervene with the home ministry to bring him back,” said Congress MP Isha Khan Choudhury, who represents the Maldaha Dakshin constituency.“I raised this issue three times in the Rajya Sabha. Even when I give notices under Rule 267, permission is denied,” claimed Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam, who also heads the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board.West Bengal’s long-standing vulnerabilitiesIn 2023, after the Coromandel Express accident laid bare the extent of migrant worker crisis in the state, the West Bengal government formed the Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board, formally set as a specialised body under the Labour Department to address the long-standing vulnerabilities of the state’s massive migrant population.The stated goal was to create a mechanism for rescue, compensation, legal aid, and grievance redressal. In August 2025, after large-scale detention of migrant workers across multiple BJP-ruled states, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced a monthly financial assistance of Rs 5,000 for up to a year to workers returning due to harassment or distress, alongside self-employment grants of up to Rs 50,000 to help them settle locally.Except, there are few takers.“The state announced Rs 5,000 assistance, but a fraud concerning applicants from other states was detected. Within ten days, all eligible beneficiaries will receive the money. We are trying to train workers for the local jute industry, but salaries of Rs 14,000 – Rs 15,000 don’t attract them when they can earn double elsewhere,” said Islam.The Board claimed to have processed over 1,100 complaints related to wage theft and physical assault, while also providing legal and logistical support to bring the bodies of deceased workers back to West Bengal. It was not able to give an exact figure on the number of people trained to work for the Jute Industry, which itself is struggling.Asif Farooq of the Migrant Workers Unity Forum said that even the scale of the crisis is disputed and politically elastic. “We still cannot accurately say how many migrant workers there are in the district. The chief minister’s speeches and the administration’s statements keep giving different numbers. Sometimes it’s 22 lakhs, sometimes it’s 28 lakhs. We ourselves are quite confused.”Murshidabad has one of the highest migration rates in West Bengal – with nearly 48% of households dependent on migrant income – and a Human Development Index of around 0.46, reflecting deep structural deprivation. A dangerous loop has formed where riverbank erosion feeds into economic migration, which in turn leads to political disenfranchisement and profiling in host states.The primary driver remains the stark economic asymmetry between West Bengal and other Indian states. For most families, migration is not optional. Daily wages in rural West Bengal hover around Rs 250-Rs 300, while states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu offer Rs 700-Rs 1,000 per day in construction and masonry.A relentless threatIn January, Beldanga, an area known for past communal flare-ups, saw unrest after the death of Alauddin Sheikh, a migrant worker from Murshidabad working in Jharkhand. When his body reached Beldanga on January 16, residents blocked a national highway, burnt tyres, and disrupted Sealdah–Lalgola train services. Residents alleged that Alauddin was beaten to death on suspicions of being a Bangladeshi national, while Jharkhand Police claimed that initial evidence suggested suicide.Local businessman and tournament organiser Kanchan Bhaskar told The Wire, “Boys from our area went to other states for livelihood and returned as corpses after being beaten over religion and language. That pent-up anger exploded, it was not a protest of any one religion.”Not far from Beldanga, Anisur Rahaman from Majhyampur travelled to Hajipur, Bihar, to sell recycled mobile phones. He was assaulted by a mob. His father, Taslim Sheikh, who has sold women’s hair in the region for eight years, recounted the horror, “I rushed to the spot and saw my son’s body hanging from an iron rod. He was still breathing. Before he lost consciousness, he told me a mob surrounded him, branded him a ‘Bangladeshi,’ and began beating him over his language and his faith. They left him only when they thought he was dead.”During Taslim’s conversation with The Wire, villagers received news that Ujdar Ali Sheikh was being beaten in Uttar Pradesh, a detail that underscored the relentlessness of the threat. According to the Migrant Workers Unity Forum, at least 35 migrant workers from Murshidabad have died since December 2025 – a vast majority in unnatural circumstances including accidents, murder, suicide and lynchings. Beyond statistics, the crisis is characterised by the breakdown of families, the erosion of educational standards for children, and a significant mental health burden on both migrants and those they leave behind. Khoka Sheikh, a migrant worker, said the anger is rooted in abandonment and the absence of protection before tragedy strikes. “These incidents are increasing. We need immediate help… Danger is at our doorstep. After death, jobs are given, but survival support should come first. I knew the environment was deteriorating, but we had no alternative work. Now, the word is out. If you are heard speaking Bengali, the BJP people will beat you.”The Beldanga unrest case has now been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) by the Union Home Ministry. So far, four FIRs have been registered, and 36 people, including the prime accused, have been arrested. All remain in judicial custody.But for families like Juel Rana’s, investigations and deployments only address the symptom, not the disease. Their anger is rooted in a harsher truth – a system where poverty forces migration, migration invites suspicion, and suspicion often turns fatal.Translated from the original Bengali and with inputs by Aparna Bhattacharya.