KOLKATA: Sunali Khatun, a pregnant woman deported to Bangladesh in June this year, returned to India along with her eight-year-old son through the Mahadipur border in West Bengal’s Malda district on Friday, two days after the Supreme Court nudged the central government to let her return “on humanitarian grounds”.
Sunali Khatun was rushed to Malda Medical College and Hospital for examination as she is in an advanced stage of pregnancy, officials at the border told reporters.
“If doctors declare her fit for travel, then Khatun and her son will be taken to their village in the Paikar area of Birbhum as soon as possible,” a state police officer said, requesting anonymity.
Sunali Khatun and her minor son were picked up from Delhi on June 24 on suspicion that they were illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and pushed across the border. The two, who were deported along with her husband, and three members of another family were arrested by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) under the country’s Control of Entry Act and jailed for illegally entering without travel documents.
Officials said the BGB and India’s Border Security Force completed legal procedures on Friday evening to let Khatun and her minor son Sabir Sheikh enter India as ordered by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The order was preceded by long legal battles in India and Bangladesh.
In India, the Supreme Court on Wednesday, which was hearing an appeal by the central government, observed that the matter demanded humanity over technicalities. The Centre has appealed against two orders of the Calcutta high court, which on September 26, directed that the six persons deported to Bangladesh on June 26 be brought back and given a full opportunity to prove their Indian citizenship. The deportees included Sunali, her minor son and husband, who lived in Delhi’s Rohini area where she worked as a domestic help. The high court had also passed a similar direction in a separate petition involving another woman, her husband and their minor son. They, too, were held from the Rohini area on June 24 and pushed across the border on June 26.
The deportations ordered by the Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) Delhi triggered a political row with the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal accusing Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states of detaining hundreds of migrant workers from the state and declaring them Bangladeshi infiltrators just because they speak Bengali.
The row continues in the run-up to the 2026 state polls with TMC leaders calling their BJP counterparts Bangla-birodhi zamindars (anti-Bengali landlords).
TMC Rajya Sabha member Samirul Islam, who is providing legal assistance to the two families of migrant workers, said Khatun’s return marked a victory.
“Finally, after a long battle against the Bangla-Birodhi Zamindars, Sunali Khatun and her minor son have returned to India. This day will be remembered as a historic moment that exposes the torture and atrocities inflicted on poor Bengalis. Sunali, who was pregnant at the time, was forcibly deported in June this year,” Islam wrote on X.
According to the TMC, Sunali, her husband Danish Sheikh, their son and another couple, Sweety Bibi and Kurban Sheikh, and their minor son Imam Dewan are all residents of Birbhum. The families went to Delhi in search of employment and were picked up by police from the Rohini area on June 24.
Sunali Khatun’s father Bhadu Sheikh and Amir Khan, Sweety Bibi’s uncle, moved the high court days after the families were pushed into Bangladesh on June 26.
