Six West Bengal natives, including three minors and two women, were picked up in June 2025 as suspected illegal migrants in Delhi, taken to Assam, and forcibly deported to Bangladesh.
Four of them returned in July 2026, after spending a year in Bangladesh as actual immigrants.
Sweety Bibi, 33, and her sons, aged 17 and seven, along with Danish Sekh, returned from Bangladesh on July 8 this year. Danish’s wife and her eight-year-old son, who were deported with them, were allowed to return six months earlier, in December last year.
In an interview with The Red Mike, Sweety described how she was taken from her home in Delhi during an exercise to identify suspected Bangladeshi migrants. She said she produced her Aadhaar card and other documents and told officials that she was from Birbhum in West Bengal.
Sweety Bibi and her two sons, Kurban and Imam, were picked up from a neighbouring shanty. Sunali and her son were detained when she went to the police station to ask about her husband.
They were soon produced before the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in RK Puram. The office, on June 26, 2025, issued deportation orders for all six. They were allegedly taken to Assam and pushed into Bangladesh, while their families remained unaware of their deportation.
None of them recall when exactly they were left at the edge of a forest after being taken out of a police vehicle. Even though Sunali grew up in forested areas in Birbhum, Bengal, she said the darkness was unlike anything she had seen before. Danish, Sunali, their son Sabir, along with Sweety, her two sons, Kurban and Imran, did not know where they were left, and yet the Border Security Force ordered them to run into the woods.
When they refused, the BSF personnel said, “Run, or get shot,” she said.
They ran even though they had nothing with them. No food, money, or identification documents; the authorities had taken everything before deporting them.
Recalling those days in the interview, she said, “Family wandered for about 10 days through forests, rivers and muddy areas without adequate food or money.”
“Children cried from hunger, and the family drank water from rivers to survive,” she added.
This story was originally published in millattimes.com. Read the full story here.