About 16,500 of the refugees, including Sahidullah, have been issued identity cards by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that it says helps them "prevent harassment, arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation".
India says it does not recognise the cards.
"Anyone who has entered the country without a valid legal permit is considered illegal," said A. Bharat Bhushan Babu, a spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs. "As per the law, anyone illegal will have to be sent back. As per law they will be repatriated."
The UN's stance is that deporting the Rohingya violates the principle of refoulement – sending back refugees to a place where they face danger.
Reuters interviewed dozens of Rohingya in two settlements, one in the northern city of Jammu and a smaller one in the capital, Delhi, and found communities who feel they are being increasingly vilified. Many now fear Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government is about to act on its stated position – that it wants to deport all Rohingya Muslims from the country. With a general election due by next May, they worry that targeting them will be a populist tactic used by Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
"It's definitely an election issue," said Kavinder Gupta, a BJP legislator in Jammu & Kashmir and former deputy chief minister of the state. "It's our decision to throw them out keeping in mind the security situation of the state," he told Reuters at a campaign meeting for municipal elections. "We have made the home ministry aware of the need to send them back to their country."
BJP chief Amit Shah said that all illegal immigrants were "like termites eating into the nation's security...Elect us back next year and the BJP will not allow a single one of them to stay in this country," Shah said, without specifically mentioning any group of migrants.
The atmosphere facing the Rohingya in India has been getting increasingly ugly.
Jammu's Chamber of Commerce & Industry last year threatened to launch an "identify and kill movement" against the settlers, which it said pushed the government into taking the issue of Rohingya more seriously. The chamber's president, Rakesh Gupta, told Reuters on Friday that there was nothing new in taking the law into one's hands if "someone becomes a threat to our security, to the nation's security, and the security forces don't tackle them".
The Pioneer newspaper, which supports the BJP, said in an editorial on Saturday that "the Rohingya are a problem", declaring that those that are radicalized Islamist extremists need to be dealt with ruthlessly and the rest are economic migrants that India cannot afford to help.
"We came to India because people told us things were better here, there's more work and one could move freely unlike back home," said Sahidullah, who works as a cleaner at a car showroom in Jammu city to support his aging amnesiac mother, wife and four children. "All that's true and we are thankful to India for letting us live here. But hatred against us is growing," he told Reuters as he sat on a colourful linen sheet laid on the floor of his self-made wood and plastic-sheet house built on a rented plot of land. Mohammed Arfaat, a 24-year-old Rohingya youth leader in Jammu, said that locals often accuse them of having links with militants without any proof. "They want us out of here and that has got our families worried," said Arfaat, switching between English and Hindi as nearly a dozen community elders seated around him on the rough concrete floor of a Rohingya house started leaving for Friday prayers. "Everybody here is aware of the deportation [the recent expulsion of the seven Rohingya] and is afraid."
India's home ministry has told the Supreme Court that it had reports from security agencies and other authentic sources "indicating linkages of some of the unauthorised Rohingya immigrants with Pakistan-based terror organisations and similar organisations operating in other countries". Senior Jammu police officials said they had not found any link of Rohingya with militants.
The Rohingya are not only accused of being terrorists but also of trafficking in drugs and humans, and of having the money to elbow out local businesses.
Jammu police authorities on condition revealed to Reuters that they had identified all Rohingya in the area in preparation for their eventual deportation.
"Current conditions in Myanmar's Rakhine state are not conducive for safe, dignified and sustainable return of stateless Rohingya refugees," said UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic.
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