Guwahati: What began as a routine arrest of a Bangladeshi infiltrator in Assam’s Darrang district has unravelled into one of the most sensational exposés of how illegal immigrants are not just entering India undetected, but building entire false lives here, marrying Hindu women, and fathering children under stolen identities.
The man at the centre of this case is Mohammed Zakir, a Bangladeshi national from Borishal, arrested on May 18 in the Dhola area of Darrang district by Assam Police. Zakir confessed before the media, “I am from Bangladesh and entered India through West Bengal 5-6 years ago.”
The story of how he got there is the part that should alarm every Indian. Zakir crossed into West Bengal from Bangladesh about 5 to 6 years ago. He spent his first year in Kolkata doing odd jobs — and using that time to acquire forged Indian documents. A fake PAN card. A fake Aadhaar card. A manufactured Indian identity, complete and convincing, obtained from within West Bengal’s document forgery network.
Armed with these, he was no longer a Bangladeshi intruder. On paper, he was an Indian citizen. He moved to Bengaluru. Got a job at a private company. And then he met a young Hindu girl from Darrang district in Assam. He introduced himself as a Hindu Bengali man from Kolkata. She believed him. They fell in love. They got married. They had a daughter together, now three years old. For years, the deception held. One of the victim’s relatives said, “ She came to know his original identity recently when the anti-Bangladeshi operation started nationwide.”
In March this year, the victim discovered the truth. She found out that her husband’s real name was not what he had told her. That he was not Hindu, and he was not from Kolkata and not even Indian. She was living with a Bangladeshi infiltrator who had entered the country illegally, forged documents, and constructed an entirely fake Hindu identity specifically to marry her. The victim, along with her daughter, left Bengaluru. She came straight back to her native village in Darrang district.
Mohammed Zakir arrived in Assam on May 17, looking for his wife and daughter. He reached Dhola village on Monday. But this is Assam — not Bengaluru. The villagers noticed a stranger. They asked questions. Something did not add up. Alert locals immediately informed the police. Zakir was arrested on the spot.
This arrest is not just about one man. It is a live demonstration of a system being exploited at every level. Zakir entered through a porous Bengal border. He embedded himself in Kolkata. He acquired forged Aadhaar and PAN cards — documents that are supposed to be the bedrock of Indian identity verification — with apparent ease. He then travelled freely across the country, got employed in a private company, and married an Indian woman, all while being an illegal foreign national.
The Love Jihad angle has sent shockwaves across Assam. A Bangladeshi Muslim man, entering illegally, deliberately concealing his religion and nationality, targeting a Hindu girl — and succeeding for years — is precisely the pattern that Hindu organisations and state governments have been warning about. This case puts that warning in a name, a face, and a three-year-old child caught in the middle.
The investigation is ongoing. Police are now probing the document forgery network in West Bengal that provided Zakir with his fake Indian identity — a threat, if pulled, that could expose a far larger racket. One arrest. One village in Darrang. But the story it tells reaches from the Bangladesh border to the streets of Kolkata to the offices of Bengaluru — and straight into the heart of India’s identity security crisis.
