Backstory: When an old woman called me from Bangladesh

On a humid June day, my colleague and I were in the middle of an interview in Assam’s Barpeta district when my phone rang.

It was Mostafuzur Tara, a journalist from Bangladesh’s Kurigram district, who I had contacted a week ago.

Mostafuzur had helped me report on the story of 14 people from Assam, who had been picked up on May 27 from the Matia detention centre in the dead of the night.

There were rumours that they were being taken to the Bangladesh border and left there, but no confirmation was forthcoming.

The next morning, however, Mostafuzur’s video report brought proof that the 14 men and women, who had spent all their life in India, had been forced out of the country and into a swamp in the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh.

I answered the phone. Almost immediately, Mostafuzur handed over the phone to an elderly woman. She was in tears, her voice exhausted.

“Please take me back to Assam,” she said. “I don't have anyone here.”

The woman, in her 60s, said she had been pushed into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force along with the other declared foreigners.

Declared foreigners are Assam residents who have been pronounced non-citizens by foreigners’ tribunals because of inadequacies in their identity documents.

But the elderly woman could not run too far. She injured her leg and was left behind. Some villagers in Bangladesh provided her food and shelter.

The Bangladeshi journalist said she had to be admitted to a hospital for her injury. “She is too old to walk. Please try to find her family.”

Hearing the voice of a helpless woman, stranded in a foreign country, I felt deeply unsettled.

As reporters, it is not uncommon for people we meet and report on to approach us for information or to rely on us to tell their stories.

But we don’t cross some lines.

As a reporter, one of the rules I follow is not to get personally involved.

My story must not only be shaped by the emotions of those I report on, but also a larger legal and political context.

I fear that assisting others might breach ethical norms. What if my offer to help them influences the story I write? Will my readers sniff a conflict of interest? And what does it mean to help someone the state, with all its power and might, has expelled from its territory?

But reporting on Assam’s citizenship trials that threaten to disenfranchise large numbers of Bengal-origin Muslims and violent demolition drives that target the community, I have come face to face with people in desperate circumstances.

I think of the old frail man, who was forced out of India, along with the others. He found his way back to Assam but he had no legal representative to fight his case in the Supreme Court.

The family, too poor to bear the cost of a lawyer, looked to me with hope. I could not do much, except put them in touch with a lawyer in Guwahati who agreed to help them pro bono.

In July, I met 54-year-old Abdul Barek during a demolition in Goalpara district. He had lived there for over four decades. But his home and those of 1,080 other families were demolished.

Long after my story was filed, Barek kept calling me, seeking help and guidance on how to get his land back. One day, he broke down. “In this heavy rainfall, we are being forced to live on the road.”

The desperation of people like Barek stems from the fact that no help is coming for them – neither from the state’s political leadership nor Assamese civil society.

The lives of Miya Muslims, who migrated to Assam from Bengal in the late 1800s and early 1900s, have always been hard. They are looked at with suspicion, and vilified as “illegal immigrants” for their ethnic and religious identity and their migration history.

But this year, the community – one I belong to – has faced unprecedented state assault with regular demolition of homes and expulsion of people to Bangladesh.

The helplessness of the displaced plays out almost every day on television channels, often with little sympathy for those left homeless.

And so, I found my resolve wavering when I spoke to the elderly woman abandoned in Bangladesh.

That evening, I approached the members of the All Assam Minority Students’ Union to see if they knew about the woman’s family.

By midnight, they shared the number of the son.

I called him up right away. The son knew that his mother had been pushed into Bangladesh but he had no way of reaching her.

I gave him Mostafuzur’s number and hoped for the best.

After a month, he called me. His mother had made it back to her native village in Assam.