Others like Munir, who occupies time as a vegetable vendor when not attending to duties as a compounder to a local doctor, seek the benevolent interference of their employer when harassed by the police. They all, however, claim to be very much Indian. ``The police will never be able to weed out the real Bangladeshis because they are the clever ones,'' says Munir. ``The first thing they do is get themselves ration cards. The next, they learn how to buy their way out through difficulties.''

Another resettled Bengali at Bainganwadi talks about a Bangladeshi family he knows has settled down for good: ``They have a bhatti(country brewery). And have all the `connections'. I can challenge you, people like them will never be deported.''

Surendra Agarwal, a local Bajrang Dal activist, has never met Munir. But he echoes the same views. ``There are hordes of ration card dalals (brokers) operating in these areas. All you need is a corrupt BMC official and a local politico and you not only have an identity, you also have a receipt for your jhopda (hut) dating back to the 'eighties, if not earlier,'' Agarwal told The Indian Express.

However, if the Bengali Muslims do possess these identity papers, they are simply of no use because, as Sheikh Ali, a local social worker points out, the Bengali and Bihari Muslims lack the political savvy of the Bangladeshis.But they do share some cultural affinities with the Bangladeshis by and large similar styles of dress, sari drapes, language and food habits. ``Someone who is not listening to them closely, wouldn't be able to tell the difference,'' says Nazrul, though there arethe subtleties.

For example there is a discernible smattering of Urdu in the Bangladeshi's Bengali. Some sanskritised Bangla words are replaced by outright Persian which are not used by Biharis speaking Bangla or even the Bengali Muslims. And so outraged Bengali settlers in the slums of North East Mumbai, many of whom were among those who attended BJP leader Pramod Mahajan's election rallies earlier this year, complain of the day when the police came to pick up Fatmabi and her family in the dead of the night when her husband was not home. They took away her adolescent son, instead, despite protests that they were not Bangals (a derogatory reference to East Bengalis as opposed to those on the Indian side of the border). Stories like these abound.

However, there is a fair scattering of Bangladeshis in North East Mumbai -- more particularly in Ekta Nagar, PMG Colony, Chikalwadi, Sai Baba Nagar and other colonies nestling in the Govandi-Mankhurd belt.