When Sunali Khatun crossed back into India on December 5, she had spent more than five months in Bangladesh, mostly in jail. Her alleged crime: being Bangladeshi. Sunali is eight months pregnant.
The 26-year-old, accompanied by her eight-year-old son Sabir, returned to her home in Darjipara village in West Bengal's Birbhum district the next afternoon. Neighbors and local political activists gathered to welcome her. Her husband, Danish Sheikh, 28, remains in Bangladesh—out of jail on bail but unable to return.
Their ordeal began on June 21, when Delhi police picked up Sunali, Danish, their son, and three others from the Bangali Basti area in Rohini Sector 26 of New Delhi. Within five days, they were forced to leave through Assam — at night, without notice to their families. Court documents show no verification was done with authorities in West Bengal, where Sunali and the others had lived most of their lives.
“We were always ready for every inquiry. We have land records dating back to 1952,” Sunali’s father, Bhodu Sekh, told Decode. “The irony is, the Delhi police made no inquiry or verification at all!”
Sunali’s case is not isolated. At least 13 West Bengal natives have allegedly been forcefully pushed to Bangladesh this year as “illegal migrants” without verification from different cities in India. Nine have been brought back; four remain stranded, their fate dependent on a Supreme Court hearing scheduled for December 12.
Deportations Without Proof
During the Calcutta High Court hearing, lawyers for the Union government and Delhi Police did not contest the absence of verification. Instead, they argued that citizenship was “a question of fact requiring detailed examination of evidence” and that the habeas corpus petition was not maintainable post-deportation. The court disagreed, setting aside both the June 24 detention order and the June 26 deportation order.
Most deportees possessed Aadhaar, voter ID, ration card, or land documents. Yet, police insisted on passports or birth certificates, which migrant workers rarely have. In several cases, families sent voter rolls and land records to police before deportation, but they were ignored.
Amir Sekh, 21, was detained in Rajasthan in May and deported to Bangladesh in July. His family says they sent Rajasthan police identity documents, including land records from 1941, in May. His great-grandfather Bilat Sekh's name appears in West Bengal's 1971 voter list, while his parents’ names appear in the 2002 voter list. He returned only after court intervention.
Mostafa Kamal Sekh was detained in Maharashtra and deported. He was brought back days later. His name, along with his parents', appears on the 2002 electoral roll for Manteswar assembly constituency in East Burdwan district.
Fazar Mandal and his wife Taslima were deported and retrieved in June. Fazar's grandfather's name is listed in the 2002 voter roll for Bagdah assembly constituency—where the family still lives.
"Had the police made any efforts to verify his nationality from the locality or the local administration, the young couple would not have had to face that kind of a harrowing ordeal," said Abdul Gaffar Mandal, a schoolteacher and member of Ranghat gram panchayat in Bagdah of Bangladesh-bordering North 24-Parganas district.
In India’s anti-migrant drive targeting illegal Bangladeshi and Myanmarese Muslim migrants since February, which intensified following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, thousands of Bengali-speaking Muslims have been detained for days in state ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling force.
Many of them were West Bengal natives, having a wide range of identity documents. However, hundreds of them had to face several weeks in detention, as the police took their own sweet time to satisfy themselves about the veracity of the documents. In Assam, the number of deportations was even higher than those formally recorded by courts. Many were subsequently brought back.
At the same time a few thousand illegal Bangladeshi migrants were “pushed back”—a term for informal deportation through porous borders. According to reports in the media in Bangladesh, over 1,700 were “pushed out” in May and June.
The Evidence Never Examined
In West Bengal, the 2002-2003 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) voter list serves as a key document for proving citizenship—the last electoral roll compiled through a comprehensive door-to-door verification. Those whose names appear on this list don't need additional documentation for subsequent voter rolls.
Nearly all the wrongly deported individuals or their immediate family members appear on this list.
Sunali's parents, Bhodu Sheikh and Jyotsna Bibi, are listed on the 2002 SIR roll for Murarai assembly constituency, along with her in-laws—serial numbers 506 through 513. Sunali was three years old in 2002.
Sweety Bibi, 33, who remains in Bangladesh with two sons—Kurban Sekh, 17, and Imam Dewan, 10—has a similar paper trail. Her parents, Saitul Sekh and Lazina Bibi, are listed on Jharkhand's 2003 SIR voter roll within Pakur assembly constituency, from when the family lived there before moving to Birbhum in 2005.
“Our family came to Birbhum in 2005. So, the family has its members' names in the Jharkhand voter list before that. We have submitted copies of the 2003 Jharkhand voter list to the West Bengal election authorities during the ongoing SIR exercise in Bengal,” said Amir Khan, Sweety's cousin and the petitioner in court cases seeking her return.
None of these records were examined before deportation.
The detentions happened under various circumstances—cops raided some neighbourhoods where predominantly Bengali-speaking Muslims live, construction sites with Bengali-speaking labourers were raided, and in some cases Hindu nationalist groups reported to the police about the presence of suspected Bangladeshi/Myanmarese Muslims. In one case, two young men speaking in Bengali at a Maharashtra bus stand while sipping tea after the day's work got abruptly picked up and deported to Bangladesh.
The police in those states allegedly refused to recognise Aadhaar, Voter ID, PAN and ration card as a trustworthy proof of identity or nationality and insisted on getting their passport, digital birth certificate, school-leaving certificates or land records—documents that many migrant worker families do not have.
Deportation Guidelines, Only On Paper
The deportations appear to violate the Ministry of Home Affairs' own protocols. A guideline dated May 2, 2025 states that when someone detained as a suspected Bangladeshi or Myanmar national claims Indian citizenship and residence in another state, the detaining state must contact that state for verification.
State authorities must complete the inquiry—including name, parentage, residential address, and details of relatives—within 30 days and send a report to the detaining state. During this period, suspects should be kept in a holding centre. Deportation may proceed only if no report arrives within 30 days.
The Calcutta High Court, in its September 26 order demanding the return of the six deportees, noted: "Admittedly, no such enquiry was conducted and the Delhi Administration did not even wait for a week before issuance of the order of deportation."
Court documents reveal the compressed timeline that converted Indian citizens into deportees.
On June 21, the six were detained by Delhi police and produced before the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) at RK Puram. A deportation order obtained by the families restricted the movement of the six "foreigners" to a community center "until their deportation."
The order listed all six as residents of "Molargangchepuarpaar village, Post Office: Depusarpaar, Bagerhat, Bangladesh"—a place none had lived.
The document stated they had been "detected to be illegal migrants of Bangladesh" and "failed to provide any suitable reason or supportive documents to justify their illegal entry/overstay in India."
In his petition, Bhodu Sekh alleged the detention occurred "despite all three having valid identity documents—Aadhaar cards, Voter ID cards, and ration cards." He noted that he owns land and his father Hatim Tai Shekh's name is on the voter list.
Court proceedings show the detainees were interrogated by a sub-inspector at K.N. Katju Marg police station on June 23. Records were forwarded to the FRRO, which sent the detainees to a community center on June 24. The deportation order was issued June 26.
The process took five days.
The deportation order for the six people who were forced into Bangladesh.
After families filed complaints, the Paikar police station in West Bengal collected documents—residential proof, Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, voter identity cards, title deeds. Following local verification, Paikar police emailed their findings to K.N. Katju Marg Police Station in Rohini on July 10.
The email was never answered, the Calcutta high court bench pointed out in its September 26 judgment.
The Calcutta High Court's observations were direct. Justices Reetobroto Kumar Mitra and Tapabrata Chakraborty noted that while Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946 places the burden on individuals to prove they are not foreigners, “such provision does not empower the executive to pick up a person at random, knock at his/her door and tell him that he is a foreigner.”
The court emphasised that authorities must first possess “some material basis or information to suspect that a person is a foreigner and not an Indian.” “Suspicion, however high, cannot be a substitute for actual proof,” the judgment stated. The court identified inconsistencies in interrogation forms. After noting educational qualifications, the names of institutions were omitted. Family member details lacked residential locations. Most notably, the interrogation report claimed Sunali had illegally entered India in 1998. Her Aadhaar and PAN cards show she was born in 2000. "Hence, Sunali could not have entered India in 1998,” the court noted.
After deportation through the Assam border in late June, the six found themselves in Bangladesh. In August, Bangladeshi police arrested them and jailed them as illegal infiltrators. They secured bail from a Bangladeshi district court in November after West Bengal's Trinamool Congress arranged legal representation for them.
In fact, it was the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel who had informed Fazer’s father over phone that his son and daughter-in-law had been pushed into Bangladesh. The Indian authorities did not inform the family at all.
The Birbhum families' situation gained public attention after video appeals from Sweety and Sunali in Bangladesh circulated in West Bengal in the last week of July. The case triggered political debate, with parties opposed to India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party characterising the deportations as “anti-Bengali.”
On December 3, the Union government informed the Supreme Court that “purely on humanitarian grounds” it would allow Sunali to return with her minor son—but not her husband Danish.
When Sunali arrived at Darjipara on December 6, her family welcomed her home. Her relatives have lived in the village for four generations.
But Danish remains in Bangladesh, his child due to be born without him present.
“The family has been living here for four generations. I've their family tree. A bona fide Indian citizen had to spend five harrowing months abroad and in jail just because the government officials made no efforts to verify their citizenship,” said Samima Bibi, vice-chairman of Paikar 1 gram panchayat.
Sweety Bibi and her two sons await a similar outcome. Their fate, and Danish's, depends on the Supreme Court hearing on December 12, when a bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi will hear the case.
Amir Sekh, brought back in August, hasn't left West Bengal since his return. The former migrant construction worker now operates an e-rickshaw gifted by a local NGO.
"The Rajasthan police neither visited our place for physical verification, nor asked the Bengal police to verify," said Ajmal Sekh, Amir's cousin. The income as construction worker in southern and western Indian states is higher, but Amir’s too afraid to move out for work again, Ajmal said.
The cases reveal a gap between immigration enforcement policy and practice. The Ministry of Home Affairs has established protocols requiring interstate verification before deportation. However, police forces in Delhi, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra detained Bengali-speaking individuals, identified them as Bangladeshi, and deported them without contacting West Bengal authorities—despite guidelines requiring verification.
The immediate costs are clear: months of wrongful imprisonment, separated families, disrupted education, and the experience of being declared a foreigner in your own country.
"There's no place like homeland. What else can I say?" Sunali told reporters upon her return.
For now, Sunali is home. But her husband remains across the border, and three others remain stranded, still waiting for their government to acknowledge what their land records, voter registrations, and four generations of residence claim to show: They are Indians.
This story has been edited by Adrija Bose
