The parents of Sunali Khatun, the pregnant woman who along with her family was pushed into Bangladesh in June for allegedly being an illegal immigrant, on Saturday sought to know what more was expected from them to bring her back home after their names have been found on the 2002 West Bengal voters’ list released by the Election Commission (EC) ahead of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
Talking to The Indian Express over phone from Birbhum district’s Paikar village, Bhodu Sheikh, Sunali’s father, said “Now our names are on the list. What more do I need to have my pregnant daughter and her family back home? The Calcutta High Court has issued an order, and a court in Bangladesh has also ordered their return. But nothing has happened so far.”
Her mother Jyotsna Bibi said, “We are worried about her condition there. We don’t know what kind of care she is getting in the jail in Bangladesh. She needs to return and deliver the child here. We are really worried for her well-being.”
Raghunath Chakraborty, the lawyer representing Sunali, said the names of her parents have been found in the 2002 voter list from the Murarai Assembly segment in Birbhum. Paikar Prathamik Vidyalaya at Paikar village is mentioned as their polling station, he added.
“It is sad that despite the court order, Sunali and her family are yet to return home. Sunali being pregnant is a cause for concern too,” he added.
Chakraborty said the latest revelation has further strengthened Khatun’s case, and her unborn baby will get Indian citizenship by “descent” even if the child was born in Bangladesh.
At present, Khatun and her family are lodged in a Bangladesh jail for illegally entering the neighbouring country. Sunali, her husband Danish, and their eight-year-old son were pushed into Bangladesh on June 26 after being detained by the Delhi Police. The family, migrant labourers from Bengal, had been working as ragpickers in Delhi for around 20 years.
In September, the Calcutta High Court had directed the Centre to ensure that Sunali, her family and a woman named Sweety Bibi, 32, and her two sons, aged six and 16, who were also detained and deported at the same time on same charges, be brought back to India within a month. The order was challenged by the Central government before the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Khatun’s parents have also filed a contempt petition in the Calcutta High Court against the Centre for the government’s ‘failure’ to bring her back.
The deadline set by the Calcutta High Court for the Centre to bring back Khatun and five others to India expired on October 24. On October 3, a court in Bangladesh also declared them as Indian citizens and directed to send them back.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress on Saturday claimed that Sonali’s parents were documented as Indian citizens in the 2002 voter list in Birbhum and that the SIR of electoral rolls is “an assault on the very idea of Bengal and its people”.
“The deportation of Sunali Khatun, a pregnant woman from Birbhum, exposes not merely bureaucratic cruelty but a calculated political manoeuvring,” the TMC said in a social media post.
“What the @BJP4India parades as its SIR drive is, in truth, an assault on the very idea of Bengal and its people. It seeks to weaponise fear, to humiliate citizens by questioning their belonging, and to fracture the social fabric that defines this state,” it said.
“To brand an expectant mother as an illegal infiltrator when her parents stand documented as Indian citizens in the 2002 electoral rolls, is not administrative oversight; it is a moral collapse orchestrated in the name of nationalism,” the TMC wrote in a post on X.
“By exiling a pregnant Bengali woman to another country, the BJP has not merely violated constitutional ethics, it has desecrated the conscience of the Republic. This act stands as irrefutable proof that behind the rhetoric of patriotism lies a cold, relentless contempt for Bengal and her people,” the TMC said.
TMC MP Samirul Islam, who is also the chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Labour Welfare Board, said, “It (Khatun’s parents’ names in 2002 voter list) is another slap on the Centre… it detained Sunali and others in Delhi and then drove them out of the country, labelling them as illegal Bangladeshis. This is just because they are poor Bengali-speaking migrants.”