Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday dismissed as “politically motivated” and “highly malicious” comments by a United Nations racial discrimination watchdog over alleged targeting of Rohingya refugees and Bengali-speaking Muslims by Indian authorities.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said on Tuesday that law enforcement operations targeting Rohingya, Bengali-speaking Muslims, migrants and asylum-seekers had increased, particularly after a 2017 Home Ministry directive and the 2025 militant attack in Pahalgam.
The committee’s reference to 2017 appeared to concern government instructions issued that year on the deportation of undocumented migrants, including Rohingya refugees.
After the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, the Home Ministry instructed states and federal territories to verify the identities of people suspected of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Police in several states, many governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, subsequently detained Bengali-speaking people, most of them Muslims, and asked them to establish their Indian citizenship.
Some people were sent to Bangladesh after failing to establish their nationality, while others who had been wrongly deported were later able to return after Indian authorities confirmed they were citizens.
India’s foreign ministry said the UN committee’s review was part of a routine treaty-monitoring process and that New Delhi had taken part in it constructively.
MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India had presented its constitutional protections, legal safeguards, commitment to pluralism and measures aimed at supporting disadvantaged groups.
“While we will respond to the committee’s observations through the established procedure,” Jaiswal said, an Indian delegation led by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had already rejected what it called sweeping generalisations, unsupported allegations and attempts to go beyond the committee’s mandate during the review.
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