Families of Bengali migrants deported to Bangladesh stare at endless uncertainty

Murarai: Sixty-something Bhodu Sheikh sat on the porch of his ramshackle hut in Dorjee Para, a settlement tucked away in one corner of Paikar village in the Muslim-majority Murarai assembly constituency of West Bengal's Birbhum district, with a blank look in his eyes.

More than the rickety body that shrank further during the cough bouts from his debilitating asthma, Bhodu's overt signs of resignation to fate seemed expedited by his total ignorance of the current whereabouts of his daughter, Sonali, and five-year-old grandson Sabir, who along with his son-in law, Danesh, were picked up by Delhi Police from the Bengali Basti in Sector 26, Rohini, last month and pushed to Bangladesh.

They were deported following orders from the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), Delhi police had said.

The family, Bhodu said, lived in Delhi for nearly 25 years, where Danesh worked as a ragpicker and waste collector. They were targeted, among hundreds of other basti dwellers, because they spoke Bangla and were most vulnerable to being branded as 'Bangladeshis', he alleged.

"I was born in this village," Bhodu claimed, "and so was my daughter. My grandson was born in Delhi".

Sonali's brother, Suraj Sheikh, alleged that they paid a lawyer Rs 30,000 after he promised to get his sister and her family released, only to learn later that they had been sent to Bangladesh.

"We came home for the Qurbani Eid festival, but now we are too frightened to go back," Suraj's wife, Seema, chipped in.

To support his claim that his sister is now in some unknown location in Bangladesh, Suraj played a Facebook video, the authenticity of which PTI could not independently verify, where Sonali and her family, along with three others, and plead with folded hands for help.

About a kilometre away in Fakirpara in Paikar, a fledgling rural hamlet that comes alive every Tuesday on account of a cattle trading market that sits there, 30-year-old Amir Khan had a similar story to share.

Amir alleged that his sister, Sweety Bibi and her two sons, Qurban Sheikh (16) and Imam Dewan (6), were detained by Delhi Police from the same neighbourhood as Sonali and then deported to Bangladesh on June 27.

"My sister worked as a domestic help in that area. She was living in Delhi since she was 12 and wasn't at home when police raided, so they took her elder son instead. When she reached the police station looking for Qurban, they arrested her as well. She furnished Aadhaar cards as proof of their permanent address in Birbhum, which the police dismissed," Amir said.

"She had Qurban's birth certificate at home but she couldn't produce it since a devastating fire at the shanty barely days before the raids began had destroyed documents. We, however, have Imam's document here," Amir said, holding up the state health department certificate, which states that Imam was born at the Murarai rural hospital on January 1, 2020.

In the purported Facebook video, Sweety alleged that the police beat them up and coerced them into medical examinations and biometric tests before transporting them to Bangladesh.

"We haven't heard from them for nearly a month now. We have no idea where they are and how they are living through this in an unknown land," said Mahida Bibi, Sweety's mother, her voice trembling.

She claimed Sweety was born at the very house where she stood that once belonged to her grandmother.

"We will fight against this till the very end, both politically and legally," said Samirul Islam, TMC Rajya Sabha MP and a local from Murarai, while marching with his party supremo Mamata Banerjee in her 'Bhasha Andolan' protest rally in Bolpur against alleged 'linguistic terror' unleashed on migrant Bengalis by the saffron camp.

In a post on X, Islam published photographs of what he claimed were land documents of Sweety's maternal and paternal grandfathers and Sonali's paternal great grandfather – all dated between 1950s, to the 1970s.

"Anyone in the BJP who can actually read them will understand that these women are far more Indian than the loudmouth BJP touts slandering them," he wrote.

The IIT, Delhi postgraduate informed PTI that he awaited results of the legal battles on the issue pending before the high courts of Calcutta and Delhi. "We will move the Supreme Court, if required," he said.

Islam maintained that not just Muslims, but migrant backward class Hindus, like the Namashudra Matuas and Rajbanshis, are also being subjected to similar harassments of detention and deportation.

In the Jharkhand bordering village of Kahinagar, Ataul Sheikh (16) and his neighbour, Marjan (17), narrated their ordeal of being held at an Odisha government detention camp earlier this month.

"We had gone to Jharsuguda to work as masons in a construction project. On July 8, police came knocking on our doors at 1 a.m. We were first taken to the local police station and then moved to a room at a local college hostel where I was confined for four days," said Ataul, adding that his brother Satabul, too, was held.

Marjan, who was detained for two additional days, claimed he saw some 250 migrant workers, all Bengali-speaking, locked up in the camp.

"Do only Bangladeshis speak Bengali? Doesn't a significant number of Indians speak that language?" asked Chandni Bibi, Marjan's sister-in law. "By that logic, every Bengali-speaking citizen in Kolkata should also be arrested. It seems we must learn to speak in English now," she quipped.