Opinion ‘Ghuspaithiye’, the tragedy of Sunali Bibi and a thinning line in India today

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation from the Red Fort, warning of “ghuspaithiye”, illegal infiltrators, taking away jobs and land and endangering the country’s women, 29-year-old Sunali Bibi, eight months pregnant, found herself incarcerated in Bangladesh, along with her husband and eight-year-old son. She is charged under sections of the Passport Act and Foreigners Act, and accused, ironically, of being in the neighbouring country “illegally”. Except that, Sunali Bibi, or for that matter, 32-year-old Sweety Bibi and her two sons, aged six and 16 years — another family caught in a similar predicament — had not made the journey on their own. They were pushed into Bangladesh in June after being detained by the Indian police on suspicion of being illegal immigrants amid the ongoing crackdown in the country. Residents of West Bengal’s Birbhum district, Sunali Bibi’s family had been working in Delhi as domestic workers and rag pickers at the time of their forced deportation. Their plight underscores what happens when a security apparatus falters — when it treats due process as expendable, or redraws belonging on the basis of linguistic, religious or ideological prejudices. National security and border integrity are crucial imperatives, but when enforcement is guided by presumption over proof, fear over trust, collateral injustice becomes inevitable.

Sunali Bibi’s case is part of a troubling nationwide trend where the impact of arbitrary policy and dog-whistle politics is disproportionately borne by the poorest and most vulnerable. In Assam, where the rhetoric of “insiders vs outsiders” dominates political discourse, many have been declared “foreigners” through opaque mechanisms and poor legal safeguards; Aadhaar registration for adults, barring a few exceptions, has been halted, citing saturation and illegal cross-border immigration, limiting access to identity documentation. For Bengali-speaking blue-collar workers, particularly Muslims, language has become a proxy for suspicion. In Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, it has triggered detention, interrogation, and even deportation.

Advertisement

The Calcutta High Court, which is hearing the habeas corpus petitions filed by the families of Sunali Bibi and Sweety Bibi with the help of the West Bengal Migrant Labour Welfare Board, has raised legitimate concerns over these deportations: The forcible removal of people like Sunali Bibi does more than violate individual rights — it recasts citizenship as a negotiable privilege, contingent on power, perception, and political convenience. In its crackdown on undocumented foreigners, the state must ensure that it does not fail the very citizens it is mandated to protect, that every act of enforcement upholds due process and the constitutional guarantees of dignity, rights, and legal recourse. Otherwise, the line between ensuring security and perpetrating injustice grows perilously thinner.