Family from Birbhum deported to Bangladesh, says West Bengal migrant board Chief
In her video message, shared by Chairperson of the West Bengal Migrant Welfare Board and Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam on Saturday (July 19, 2025), Sweety Bibi appealed to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to help her return to India.
'We were arrested in Delhi, where we had gone to work. We showed our Aadhaar card and pleaded that we were not Bangladeshis, but the police threatened us. They said they will make us Bangladeshis,' Ms. Bibi is heard saying in the video.
'She is a permanent resident of the Murarai Assembly constituency and her family has lived there for generations. But no, she isn't speaking from her ancestral home. She is now in Bangladesh, where she and five others, including three minors, were deported by the Delhi Police,' Mr. Islam said on social media.
Referring to remarks made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Durgapur on Friday, when he spoke about 'Bengali asmita [pride]' being paramount to the BJP, the Rajya Sabha MP said, '@narendramodi, you came to Bengal and spoke extensively about infiltration. Let me introduce you to a woman named Sweety Biwi, an Indian citizen from Birbhum — the land of Rabindranath Tagore. In the video, she shares the painful ordeal she's going through.'
'What a tragedy! Despite being Indian citizens, their only 'crime' was speaking Bengali in BJP-ruled Delhi, where they had lived for years,' Mr. Islam said.
Sonali Khatun, who is eight months pregnant, is among the group deported to Bangladesh. She has been wandering helplessly in Bangladesh, Mr. Islam said, adding is not the first time residents of West Bengal are being pushed into Bangladesh by security agencies.
There have been reports of around half a dozen migrant workers from West Bengal being arrested in different parts of the country and pushed into Bangladesh, and later repatriated to India. Along with the 'push back', there have been reports of detention of migrants in different States like Odisha and Delhi on suspicion of being Bangladesh nationals. Among those detained were members of the Matua community, which comprises Hindu Namasudras who had migrated from Bangladesh.
Mr. Islam on Friday (July 18, 2025) had shared a video of Nishikanta Biswas, a resident of Ranaghat in Nadia district hailing from the Matua community, who had said that his sons Manishankar and Nayan were languishing in police custody for the past six months in Maharashtra, where they travelled to find work.
The detention of Matua members is significant as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act passed in 2019 and Rules framed in 2024 had granted citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
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