By Arka Deb
Birbhum, West Bengal: Sunali Khatun, then three-months pregnant, remembers stumbling along in a Bangladeshi forest with her crying eight-year old child in tow, surviving for 10 days mainly on river water.
She remembers sleeping on the streets of a foreign country and being looked at with “disgust” when they begged for spare food to feed the children, hiding the fact she and her children were Indian, and doing time in a Bangladeshi jail after eventually being arrested. She remembers inedible curry, hard rotis, half-boiled rice and filthy blankets.
Khatun, 25, is now home with her parents in a village called Paikar in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, but her mind keeps going back to the jail in Bangladesh, where her husband still remains.
“It was like a curse,” said Khatun, a pale, visibly distressed woman, just days away from delivering her third child, of her time in jail. “It wasn’t just one bad day—every day was like that. The children would cry, and we would cry too.”
Khatun spoke to Article 14, eight days after she returned to India and six months after she, her husband and son were plucked from their home in a Delhi slum. Her daughter, who had not been at home at the time, remained in Delhi and is now with Khatun in her village in West Bengal.
Detained despite showing at least three proofs of identity—and reassured by police that they would be released soon—they were flown to Assam, trucked to the border and forced across to a country they had never seen.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.