Bangladesh is not allowing people to come to India despite passport and visa! ISKCON members stopped at the border

Bangladeshi immigration officials on Sunday (1 November 2024) stopped 54 members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) at the Benapole border post on the Bangladesh-India border, even though they had valid passports and visas. The immigration police cited lack of special permission from the government as the reason for stopping his travel. “We took advice from the special branch of the police and received instructions from higher authorities that they should not be allowed (to cross the border),” Benapole immigration police officer Imtiaz Ahsanul Quader Bhuiyan told the Daily Star newspaper.

He said that although these devotees had valid passports and visas, they did not have “special government permission”. This group included devotees from many districts of Bangladesh, who waited at the check post from Saturday night till Sunday morning. They waited for permission for hours, but were finally told that their travel had not been approved.

Devotees were going to India to participate in religious ceremonies

“We had come to India to attend a religious function, but immigration officials stopped us, citing lack of government permission,” ISKCON member Saurabh Tapandar Cherry said, according to the Daily Star.

The incident comes amid increasing scrutiny against ISKCON in Bangladesh, especially after the arrest of Hindu leader Chinmoy Krishna Das on November 27. Chinmoy Das was arrested from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on charges of treason. It is alleged that he and his associates had hoisted a saffron flag over the Bangladeshi national flag during a rally in Chittagong on October 25.

Bank accounts of ISKCON members were frozen, protests took place

Following the arrest of Chinmoy Das, protests broke out among his supporters, resulting in violent clashes in Chittagong, in which a lawyer was killed. Bangladeshi authorities froze the bank accounts of 17 individuals associated with ISKCON for 30 days.

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