Four persons from West Bengal’s Birbhum district who were forced into Bangladesh in June 2025 were brought back to India on Wednesday, a resident of their village confirmed to Scroll.
Sunali Khatun, her husband and their son, as well as another woman, Sweety Bibi and her two sons, had been taken into custody in Delhi and sent to Bangladesh. The six persons maintain that they hail from Birbhum district.
In December, Khatun, who was pregnant at the time, and her son Sabir were brought back to India on humanitarian grounds.
On Wednesday, Khatun’s husband, Danish Sheikh, Sweety Bibi and her two sons entered West Bengal, their neighbour Soyef Ali, a resident of Paikar village in Birbhum, told Scroll.
They entered the state through the Mahadipur border crossing in Malda district.
On May 22, the Union government told the Supreme Court that it would bring back the persons who had been forced into the neighbouring country to verify their citizenship.
The Centre’s statement came while the Supreme Court was hearing its challenge to a Calcutta High Court order that had set aside the deportation order against all six of them.
It had directed that they be brought back to West Bengal within four weeks. The High Court had passed the order on a petition filed by Khatun’s father, Bhodu Sekh.
Two days before the four-week period ended, the Union government in October challenged the order before the Supreme Court. The government and the Delhi Police questioned whether the High Court had the jurisdiction to hear the case.
On Wednesday, Trinamool Congress MP Samirul Islam said that “it was only because of the judiciary’s intervention that the Union government was ultimately compelled to bring back these poor Indian citizens”
In a social media post, he said: “We have no objection to the deportation of those who are genuinely illegal infiltrators.”
“Our fundamental question remains: why should poor and genuine Indian citizens be subjected to such harassment and injustice in the name of deportation?” asked Islam.
Since the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.
Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.
Scroll has also reported on several cases of persons who were forced into Bangladesh being brought back to India, as the authorities had failed to follow the process laid down by the Union home ministry for such deportations.
Inputs from Anant Gupta. Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.
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