Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
THE CALCUTTA High Court on Friday dismissed the Centre’s deportation order against two migrant worker families from Birbhum who were pushed into Bangladesh earlier this year, and said in its order, “ ..Acting in hot haste to deport them is a clear violation which renders the deportation order bad in law, and liable to be set aside.”
A division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Ritabrata Kumar Mitra directed that the six members of the two families — including eight-month pregnant Sunali Khatun ‘Bibi’ — be brought back to West Bengal within four weeks. The court also rejected the Centre’s request for a stay on the order.
“The question of citizenship should be considered based on further documents and evidence before an appropriate Court… The process and procedure adopted in the deportation raise a suspicion that the authorities concerned, while acting in hot haste, have clearly violated the provisions of the memo dated May 2, 2025,” the order states.
“We have ordered the persons to be returned to India. We have said what steps have to be taken to return them. Four weeks’ time is given,” the bench observed. It criticised the Centre’s move to accord Bangladeshi national status to the detainees. In an earlier hearing, it had asked the Centre to file an affidavit explaining how the families were deported, and to disclose the place from which they had been deported. The Centre had then filed this affidavit.
TMC MP Samirul Islam welcomed the order, posting on social media: “Satyameva Jayate. The truth triumphs. Today the Calcutta High Court tore apart the BJP’s sham — their attempt to brand pregnant Birbhum resident Sonali Khatun and five others (including children) as ‘Bangladeshi nationals’ was exposed as a lie… I will never forget how BJP launched vile, personal attacks on me and my family when I stood with these families — true sons and daughters of Birbhum. This is not just my victory; it is Bengal’s victory — a rebuke to the BJP’s anti-Bengali, anti-poor policy. Under the leadership of (Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee), we will keep fighting until these venomous, anti-people forces are removed democratically.”
According to relatives, Sunali Bibi, her husband Danish Sheikh and their eight-year-old child were among six persons detained from Delhi in June and allegedly pushed across the border. Her father, Bhodu Sheikh, later filed a habeas corpus petition in the High Court seeking their return, citing concerns over the citizenship of her unborn child.
Another family — Sweety Bibi (32) and her two sons, aged six and 16, from Dhitora village in Birbhum — were also detained and deported around the same time. Her relatives too moved a habeas corpus plea.
Both families had been held at K N Katju Marg police station in Delhi before being deported as “Bangladeshi citizens,” the Delhi Police had earlier said.
Similar incidents of deportation were earlier reported in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. On June 14, seven persons from West Bengal were allegedly detained by the Mumbai Police and deported by the BSF.
Following intervention by the TMC government in Bengal, four youths from Murshidabad, one from Purba Bardhaman, and a married couple from North 24 Parganas were brought back from Bangladesh and sent home.
Amir Sheikh, a 19-year-old resident of Malda’s Kaliachak who was allegedly unlawfully detained by the state police in Rajasthan in June, after he travelled to that state a few months ago in search of work, and later pushed into Bangladesh, was brought back to India in August.
The development came after Jiyem Sheikh, Amir’s father, moved the Calcutta High Court seeking judicial intervention to bring his son back.
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
