Joy for 1 family, agony for another: Sunali back, cousin Sweety still trapped in B’desh
KOLKATA: Tears of relief flowed in a mud-walled home in Bengal’s Birbhum district. A kilometer away, another house filled with the same prayers stayed silent.On Saturday, Sunali Khatun returned to Paikar village with her son Shabir, 8, after months of detention in Bangladesh. Her return, ordered on humanitarian grounds because of her advanced pregnancy, has only sharpened the anguish of another Birbhum family still waiting for their daughter, Sweety Bibi, and her two sons to come back.Sweety’s third child Imran, who lives with his grandparents, keeps asking why his aunt has returned but not his mother. “How do you explain this to a 10-year-old?” said Sweety’s mother Rozina Bibi, 50. “They took my mother,” Imran said. “When will they return her to me?”The family’s struggle runs deeper. Sweety has been the sole earner since her husband Azizul Dewan went missing in TN four years ago. Working as a house help in Delhi, she supported her three sons and her ailing parents. “We cry every time we meet,” Rozina said of Sunali’s parents Bhodu and Jyotsna. “Today their daughter is back. We are happy for them. But why not mine?”Why wasn’t Sweety, deported with Sunali, brought back: KinSunali, her husband Danish Sheikh, their son, and her cousin Sweety, 32, along with Sweety’s two sons — Kurban, 16, and Imam, 6 — were picked up in June during a crackdown on “illegal immigrants” in New Delhi. They were flown to Guwahati and pushed across the border under an order of Delhi’s Foreigners Regional Registration Office. Bangladesh authorities arrested them on Aug 21. A Chapai Nawabganj court later granted them bail.A Calcutta high court division bench had quashed the deportation order, citing procedural lapses, and directed that all six be brought home. That judgment was challenged before the Supreme Court, where a two-judge bench asked the Center on Dec 3 to bring back Sunali and her son and keep her under hospital care.“If the HC ordered all six to be brought back, why was my daughter stopped?” asked Rozina. “They told us she reached the border, then said it would take two or three more days. We have been hearing this since Sept 26.”Bengal migrant workers’ welfare board chairperson Samirul Islam said Supreme Court will hear Sweety’s case again on Dec 12. “We are hopeful that Sweety and her two minor children, and Sunali’s husband, will be allowed to return too,” he said. Until then, one Birbhum household rocks a pregnant daughter back into safety. Another counts the footsteps that still haven’t crossed the border.
