KOLKATA: Till even a month ago, Sunali Khatun and her then-unborn child were virtually stateless, caught between two nations that didn’t want either of them.
The ordeal had begun in the summers when the pregnant domestic worker, her husband and minor son were picked up from Delhi’s Rohini and pushed across the border into Bangladesh on the suspicion that they were undocumented immigrants. A harrowing legal fight consumed the next six months as the 26-year-old woman approached the Supreme Court, becoming the face of the struggle that was to eventually bring her back to her homeland. Her husband, Danish Sheikh, is still across the border, in a Bangaldesh jail. On Monday, a brief interlude of joy cut through the chaos of her recent months as Khatun gave birth to her second son at a hospital in West Bengal’s Birbhum district.
“Sunali is fine. So is the child. But we are worried because her husband is still in Bangladesh,” Joshnara Bibi, Sunali’s mother, told the local media at Rampurhat Medical College and Hospital. “We want Mamata Banerjee to name the child. Sunali could not have returned without her help,” Joshnara Bibi told the local media in Birbhum.
Khatun, her husband Danish, their minor son Sabir and another woman, Sweety Bibi, and her minor sons, Qurban Sheikh and Imam Dewan, are residents of Birbhum’s Paikar. The families went to Delhi in search of employment and were picked up by police from the Rohini area on June 24 last year. They were arrested on suspicion that they were undocumented migrants and pushed across the border in 48 hours.
On June 26, all six were arrested by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) under the country’s Control of Entry Act and jailed for illegally entering without travel documents.
Helped by TMC Rajya Sabha member Samirul Islam, Sunali Khatun’s father Bhadu Sheikh and Amir Khan, Sweety Bibi’s uncle, moved the Calcutta high court days after the families were pushed into Bangladesh.
According to their petitions, these families were picked up on suspicion that they were illegal Bangladeshi immigrants because they speak Bengali and were pushed across the border on the orders of the Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) Delhi.
Their petitions, copies of which were seen by HT, said the members of the two families were “illegally detained beyond 24 hours without being produced before any court of law on the basis of suspicion that they are Bangaladeshis since they speak Bengali and the Delhi administration did not even cross-check their identity.”
On September 26, the high court directed the Centre to bring back all the deportees. The Centre challenged this order at the Supreme Court.
Four days later, a district court in Bangladesh’s Chapainawabganj ruled that all six were Indian citizens and should be sent back.
On December 3, the Supreme Court ordered that Khatun and her minor son be brought back on humanitarian grounds even as it continued to hear the case.
“The chief medical officer/civil surgeon of district Birbhum is directed to provide all the medical facilities that may be required by Sunali, who is in the family way,” said the top court order, a copy of which was seen by HT. On December 5, a heavily pregnant Khatun returned to India with her minor son.
