``It's awful here but it's nothing compared to what we suffered over the last ten days,'' says 26-year-old Atibur Mollah. ``First came the midnight knocks on our doors, 10 days in police lockups in Mumbai, then we were transported on the train handcuffed, taken to so many places and finally lodged here last evening. It's been like the life of a caged animal.''

Atibur and his mates are the first batch of Bengali-speaking people arrested by the Mumbai police and brought here for deportation toBangladesh. An enraged West Bengal Government intervened saying they didn't have a chance to prove their citizenship and brought them back from Kalyani, a town close to the India-Bangladesh border.

Most of these deportees have much the same story to tell. On July 9, around three or four in the morning, Mumbai police raided their jhuggis at the Bangalipara at Wadala near railway gate number four. They showed the police their voter ID cards, their school-leaving certificates, their ration cards; the police scoffed saying all these could be bought at a price, cases were slapped and they were sent packing.

``When we left our homes for Mumbai, we didn't get along any proof of citizenship. And why should we? After all, we are Indians. Does the government want to test my knowledge of Indian history? Do they want to ask me about Gandhiji? Ambedkar? Would I have been able to do that if I were Bangladeshi?'' asks Ghulam Mustafa, a Wadala resident.

Mustafa, who stays with nine others in a single room in thisMumbai neighbourhood, was woken up at midnight on July 7. A resident of Burdwan, he landed in Mumbai two years ago and works with Voltas as a technician. ``We were not allowed to take our proof along, but were told we would have to prove our Indianness in court,'' stated Ghulam, displaying a boxful of documents: a voter identity card, ration card, domicile, a school leaving certificate (SSC failed), as well as a work permit. ``But the police told us the documents were fake.'' Mustafa and friends are out on bail, but only till August 29, when they have to prove their citizenship.

The deportation `procedure' is a well-entrenched one: The police rely on a network which tips off the police on the presence of `infiltrators'. A midnight knock later, the `infiltrators' are summoned to the police station, and if their papers are found to be unsatisfactory, they are put on a Calcutta-bound train to be deported.

Says P A Sebastian of the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights. ``The police have toinvestigate and verify if the person is a bonafide citizen or not. But most of these are the poorest of the poor, and have little by way of documents.''

Abdullah Shahadat, an advocate who has fought cases for many a Bengali Muslim wrongly deported, added: ``The right procedure has never been followed. Their documents, which their own country has given them, are dismissed as bogus. The police get away with this only because the accused are poor, and cannot haul them up,'' said Sebastian.

While 15 of the 16 at the Calcutta police station are Muslims, there is one Hindu, Kochi Hazra, who says he had gone to Mumbai to join zari workers from Hooghly. ``I have my mother and two brothers at the village home at Baheera (Uluberia),'' Kochi says, tears flowing down his cheeks, ``they don't know where I am.''

Atibur says he, and two others who are also in the lock-up with him, went to Mumbai on July 5 to join his friends in the zari trade there. He says they are from Baheera village in the Uluberia area in WestBengal. ``People from our village and many others around have been going to Mumbai for zari work for decades. We never imagined we'd face this.''

Later in the afternoon, about 20 men and women collect in the office of the Mayor of the Howrah Municipal Corporation. They have come from Uluberia, Chengail, Nalpur and other places in Howrah district. Armed with their Election Commission cards, they are in search of their relatives who had been brought here by the Mumbai police.

One of them is Azizul Mollah from Baheera: ``My two nephews are among those evicted from Mumbai. We followed the Mumbai police on Wednesday when they brought our people. We followed them from Howrah to Sealdah and on to Kalyani. But at Kalyani we lost their track. Now we're told there are six of them from Baheera at the Biddhannagar thana. We sought the Mayor's help for their release.''

Mayor Swadesh Chakraborty told The Indian Express that the relatives would file a case in the Calcutta High Court tomorrow for their wards' release.``We will help them because they are our people. They were born and grew up in Hooghly. What crime did these poor people commit by going to Mumbai to earn a meagre living?''