Family in distress as pregnant Bengal woman, kin land in Bangladeshi jail after ‘pushback’ | Kolkata

The family, who only knows that Sunali Khatun, her husband Danish Sheikh, and their eight-year-old son were held by the Delhi Police and sent to Bangladesh after being labelled as illegal Bangladeshis, said they last spoke to Sunali around three weeks ago.

“I last spoke to her on August 3. She was crying and saying that she, her husband, and their son had been sent to Bangladesh. She had called from someone’s mobile phone in Bangladesh. After that, there has been no contact with her. When I called back on that number the next day, she had left. I don’t know whether she has been sent to jail or where she is now. Even my father doesn’t know her whereabouts,” Sunali’s sister Karishma Khatun said.

The family has raised concern that if Sunali delivers a child in Bangladesh, what would be the nationality of the newborn.

Another woman from Birbhum, Sweety Bibi, and her two minor children were also pushed into Bangladesh. They used to work as ragpickers and sometimes as domestic help in Delhi’s Rohini area.

“We are in touch with the family throughout. Everything is being done so that we can bring back the two families. We are giving them full support,” Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha member and chairman of the state migrant workers’ welfare board, Samirul Islam, said.

All six were arrested at Chapainawabganj in Bangladesh, around 300 km from Dhaka and close to the Indo-Bangla border on Thursday, and were produced before the Chapainawabganj court on Friday. The court sent them to jail custody.

This comes days after Amir Sheikh, a 21-year-old man from Malda, returned home after he was allegedly pushed back to Bangladesh. He was held by the police in Rajasthan, where he worked as a construction worker and was labelled as a Bangladeshi, before being sent to Bangladesh.

Even though allegations had surfaced that he was pushed back into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force (BSF), the border-guarding agency stated that Sheikh inadvertently crossed over to Bangladesh and was caught by the BSF when he was returning to India.