New Delhi: Nineteen migrant workers from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district have been released from custody in Chhattisgarh after verification of their documents, despite police having said earlier that their investigation had established that all 23 detained workers were from Bangladesh.The workers were among 23 people detained by Chhattisgarh Police in Bilaspur earlier this month as part of a drive to identify suspected illegal immigrants. Their families had maintained that they were Indian citizens and possessed documents including voter identity cards and Aadhaar cards. Nineteen of them were released on Friday following an order of a local civil court, The Hindu reported on Saturday.According to The New Indian Express, verification of records in the workers’ home districts in West Bengal, including Murshidabad, Malda and Jangipur, established the Indian citizenship of the 19 workers. Investigators checked voter lists, local administrative records, family details and permanent-residence documents, the newspaper reported.Confirming the release, Bilaspur Senior Superintendent of Police Rajnesh Singh said that they had been let go “after verification”. “Further steps regarding the remaining four will depend on the reports we receive,” Singh told Express.The four remaining workers are still in police custody while their records are being cross-verified. Police have said there were discrepancies relating to their permanent addresses and that their names had been struck off electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal.The latest development follows a sharply contradictory account given by Chhattisgarh Police when the workers, most of them from the Suti, Raghunathganj and Samserganj areas of Murshidabad, were first detained. They had travelled to Chhattisgarh for work and were selling household goods door to door.In a statement reported by India Today on September 7, Bilaspur police said the 23 had been detained by the Special Task Force during a drive to identify suspected illegal immigrants and people without valid documents. Police said they had allegedly been using fake Indian documents and were all Bangladeshis, based on an investigation by a team sent to West Bengal.“The investigations conducted by the STF in Murshidabad and surrounding districts have established that all of them are from Bangladesh. However, we are awaiting further confirmation, following which the deportation process will be initiated,” Bilaspur SSP Rajnesh Singh was quoted as saying.Also read: How the SIR Has Targeted Migrant WorkersThe police said the 23 had been sent to a holding or detention centre in Raipur on September 4 while the verification process was completed. The Telegraph reported that relatives said the workers were Indian citizens and possessed Aadhaar and voter identity cards. Some family members travelled to Chhattisgarh carrying Aadhaar cards, EPICs, land documents and ration cards to establish the workers’ identities.Arif Sheikh, the son of one of the detained workers, told the Kolkata-based newspaper that his father had been travelling to Bilaspur for about 20 years to sell household goods and had voter and Aadhaar cards.The Quint, which also spoke to families of the detainees, reported that the workers had told relatives that police had previously checked their documents several times. The outlet reported that 22 of the 23 detainees were Muslims and one was Hindu. It also reported that 2 of those detained were minors, according to the families.The digital news portal also reported that the workers’ families alleged police had picked them up on September 4 after they returned from work and that their phones were subsequently taken away.The detention prompted political intervention in West Bengal. Jangipur MP Khalilur Rahman told The Telegraph that families had approached him after the workers were transferred to the Raipur holding centre. He said he had written to the West Bengal chief minister and chief secretary, as well as the Murshidabad district magistrate and Jangipur police superintendent, seeking intervention and verification of the workers’ citizenship.Jangipur superintendent of police P.D. Surindar Singh told The Telegraph that his office was coordinating with Chhattisgarh Police and would provide whatever information was required.The Chhattisgarh unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties criticised the manner in which the workers had been detained. In a statement quoted by The New Indian Express, its representatives alleged that the workers had been detained without show-cause notices or adequate time to substantiate their documents.“Without serving any show cause notices and giving time to the suspected individuals to substantiate their document credentials, all 23 were detained by Bilaspur police on flimsy pretexts,” the PUCL representatives said.The organisation said records from the workers’ home districts, including electoral rolls, local administrative registers, family records and permanent-residence documents, had subsequently verified the status of the 19 released workers.Samirul Islam, a Rajya Sabha MP from the All India Trinamool Congress, cast the detentions as part of a pattern of harassment of Bengali speakers suspected of being Bangladeshi. He said he hoped the four still held would be released soon.“It has been continuing for years. Now speaking Bengali outside our State seems to be tantamount to having to prove one’s citizenship,” Islam said on X. “We should not forget that Bengali is our mother tongue and has been recognised as a classical language by none other than the Union Government of India.”The detentions in Bilaspur are the latest in a series of such actions across several states over the past year and a half. The Union home ministry issued a circular in May 2025 asking states and union territories to identify and verify people suspected of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, a document that was not made public but was widely reported.Rights groups documented thousands of Bengali-speaking people, most of them Muslim, being detained or questioned as suspected illegal Bangladeshis across states including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra last year. In several cases those held were found to hold valid Indian documents and were released after verification.The West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board, a state government body, has taken the detentions to the Supreme Court, where a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant is examining the legality of the May 2025 circular and its proscribed methods that underlies the drives. The Union government has undertaken in related cases to bring back and re-verify several Bengali speakers it had deported to Bangladesh.