'India put us on the boat like captives - then threw us in the sea'

Soyed Noor (centre) and some of the other refugees spoke to the BBC via a video call from Myanmar

Noorul Amin last spoke to his brother on 9 May. The call was brief, but the news was devastating.

He learned that his brother, Kairul, and four other relatives were among 40 Rohingya refugees allegedly deported by the Indian government to Myanmar, a country they had fled in fear years ago.

Myanmar is in the midst of a brutal civil war between the junta - which seized power in a 2021 coup - and ethnic militias and resistance forces.

The odds that Mr Amin will ever see his family again are vanishingly small.

"I could not process the torment that my parents and the others who were taken are facing," Mr Amin, 24, told the BBC in Delhi.

Three months after they were removed from India's capital, the BBC managed to contact the refugees in Myanmar. Most are staying with the Ba Htoo Army (BHA), a resistance group fighting the military in the south-west of the country.

"We don't feel secure in Myanmar. This place is a complete war zone," said Soyed Noor on a video call made from the phone of a BHA member. He spoke from a wooden shelter with six other refugees around him.

The BBC gathered testimonies from the refugees and accounts from relatives in Delhi and spoke to experts investigating the allegations to piece together what happened to them.

We have learnt that they were flown from Delhi to an island in the Bay of Bengal, put on a naval vessel and eventually forced into the Andaman Sea with life jackets. They then made their way to shore and are now facing an uncertain future in Myanmar, which the mostly-Muslim Rohingya community had fled in huge numbers in recent years to escape persecution.

"They bound our hands, covered our faces and brought us like captives [on to the boat]. Then they threw us in the sea," John, one of the men in the group, told his brother by phone soon after reaching land.

"How can someone just throw human beings into the sea?" asked Mr Amin. "There is humanity alive in the world but I have not seen any humanity in the Indian government."

Thomas Andrews, the UN's special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, says there is "significant evidence" proving these allegations, which he has presented to India's head of mission in Geneva but has yet to receive a response.

The BBC has also contacted India's Ministry of External Affairs several times but had not heard back by time of publication.

Campaigners have often flagged that the condition of Rohingya in India is precarious. India does not recognise the Rohingya as refugees but rather, as illegal immigrants under the country's Foreigners Act.

India has a sizeable population of Rohingya refugees, although Bangladesh, where more than a million live, has the biggest number. Most fled Myanmar after a deadly army crackdown in 2017. Despite having lived there for generations, Rohingya are not recognised in Myanmar as citizens.

There are 23,800 Rohingya refugees in India registered with the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency. But Human Rights Watch estimates that the actual number is upwards of 40,000.

Noorul Amin's brothers Kairul (extreme right) and Syedul (extreme left) and his parents (centre) were allegedly deported to Myanmar

On 6 May the 40 Rohingya refugees, who had UNHCR refugee cards and lived in different parts of Delhi, were taken to their local police stations under the guise of collecting biometric data. This is a yearly process mandated by the Indian government where Rohingya refugees are photographed and fingerprinted. After several hours they were taken to the Inderlok Detention Centre in the city, they told the BBC.

Mr Amin says his brother called him then and told him he was being taken to Myanmar, and asked him to get a lawyer and alert the UNHCR.

On 7 May, the refugees said they were taken to Hindon airport, just east of Delhi, where they boarded planes to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal.

"After getting off the plane, we saw that two buses had come to receive us," said Mr Noor on the video call. He added he could see the words "Bhartiya Nausena" written on the side of the buses, the Hindi term referring to the Indian Navy.

Thousands of Rohingya live in squalid conditions in refugee camps in Delhi

"As soon as we got to the bus, they bound our hands with some plastic material and covered our face with a black muslin cloth," he said.

Although the people on the buses did not identify themselves, they were dressed in military fatigues and were speaking Hindi.

After a short bus ride, the group boarded a naval vessel in the Bay of Bengal, which Mr Noor said they only realised later once their hands had been untied and their faces uncovered.

They describe the vessel as a large warship with two floors, at least 150m (490 feet) in length.

"Many of [the people on the ship] were wearing T-shirts, black-coloured trousers and black army boots," said Mohammad Sajjad, who was on the call with Mr Noor. "They weren't all wearing the same thing - some in black, some in brown."

Mr Noor says that the group was on the naval vessel for 14 hours. They were given meals regularly, traditional Indian fare of rice, lentils and paneer (cheese).

Some of the men say they were subjected to violence and humiliation on the ship.

"We were treated very badly," said Mr Noor. "Some were beaten very badly. They were slapped multiple times."

On the video call, Foyaz Ullah showed the scars on his right wrist, and described repeatedly being punched and slapped on his back and face, and poked with a bamboo rod.

"They asked me why I was in India illegally, why are you here?"

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar in waves of displacement over years

The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic community but of the 40 people forcibly returned in May, 15 are Christian.

Those detaining them on their journey from Delhi would even say, "'why didn't you become Hindu? Why did you convert from Islam to Christianity?'," said Mr Noor. "They even made us pull down our pants to see if we are circumcised or not."

Another refugee, Eman Hussain, said the military personnel accused him of being involved in the Pahalgam massacre, referring to a 22 April attack where 26 civilians, mostly Hindu tourists, were shot dead by militants in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The Indian government has repeatedly accused Pakistani nationals of carrying out the attacks, a claim Islamabad denies. There's been no suggestion that Rohingya had any link to the shootings.

The next day, on 8 May, at about 19:00 local time (12:30 GMT), the refugees were told to climb down a ladder on the side of the naval vessel. Below, they described seeing four smaller rescue boats, black and made of rubber.

The refugees were made to board two of the boats, 20 on each and accompanied by several of the people transporting them. The two other boats, which led the way, had more than a dozen personnel on them. For more than seven hours, they travelled with their hands tied.

"One of the boats with the military personnel reached the seashore and tied a long rope to a tree. That rope was then brought to the boats," Mr Noor said.

He said they were given life jackets, their hands were untied - and they were told to jump into the water. "We held on to the rope and swam more than 100m to get to the shore," he said, adding that they were told that they had reached Indonesia.

Then the people who'd taken them there left.

The BBC put these allegations to the Indian government and the Indian Navy, and have not received a response.

A civil war has raged across Myanmar since the army seized power in a coup in 2021

In the early hours of 9 May, the group was found by local fishermen who told them they were in Myanmar. They let the refugees use their phones to call their relatives in India.

For more than three months, the BHA has been assisting the stranded refugees by providing food and shelter, in the Tanintharyi region of Myanmar. But their families in India are terrified about their fate in Myanmar.

The UN says the lives of Rohingya refugees "were put at extreme risk when Indian authorities forced [them] into the Andaman Sea".

"I've been personally researching this very disturbing case," said Mr Andrews. He admitted the amount of information he could share was limited, but that he had also "spoken with eyewitnesses and been able to corroborate those reports and establish that they are based in fact".

On 17 May, Mr Amin and another family member of the refugees who were removed filed a petition urging India's Supreme Court to bring them back to Delhi, immediately stop similar deportations and offer compensation to all 40 individuals.

"It opened up the country to the awfulness of the Rohingya deportation," says Colin Gonsalves, a senior advocate in the Supreme Court who is arguing on behalf of the petitioners.

"That you can drop a person in the sea with a life jacket in a war zone was something people automatically chose to disbelieve," Mr Gonsalves said.

In response to the petition, one Supreme Court judge on the two-judge bench called the allegations "fanciful ideas". He also said the prosecution had not provided enough evidence to substantiate their claims.

Since then, the court has agreed to hear arguments on 29 September to decide whether the Rohingya can be treated as refugees or if they are illegal immigrants and therefore subject to deportations.

Noorul Amin, seen here holding his UNHCR card, says he lives in fear of being deported to Myanmar

Considering that tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees are living in India, it's not clear why so much effort was devoted to deporting these 40 people.

"Nobody in India can understand why they did it, apart from this venom against Muslims," said Mr Gonsalves.

The treatment of the refugees has sent a chill throughout the Rohingya community in India. In the past year, its members claim there has been an increase in deportations by the Indian authorities. There are no official figures to confirm this.

Some have gone into hiding. Others like Mr Amin no longer sleep at home. He has sent his wife and three children elsewhere.

"In my heart there is only this fear that the Indian government will take us also and throw us in the sea anytime. And now we are scared to even step out of our homes," Mr Amin said.

"These are people who are in India not because they want to be," said Mr Andrews from the UN.

"They're there because of the horrific violence that is occurring in Myanmar. They literally have been running for their lives."

Additional reporting by Charlotte Scarr in Delhi