More than a year after being pushed across the border into Bangladesh, Sweety Bibi still lives with the fear of being taken away again. She rarely leaves her house now, worried that police may detain her a second time.
“I do not come out of my house now. I am afraid that the police might take me again and send me to Bangladesh,” she told FoEJ Media.
Sweety, along with Sunali Khantun and her children, the residents of Paikar village in West Bengal’s Birbhum district due acute poverty pushed themselves into Delhi with hopes of a better life. However, little did they know their Bengali identity would cost them their peace and put their lives at risk.
On June 17, 2025, Sweety was cooking at home in Delhi when police arrived and asked her to come with them. When she asked where she was being taken, she said she was told to come along and that she would be released. Instead, she and her then six-year-old son were held for three days on allegations that they were Bangladeshi nationals.
“I was taken there and they told me that we were Bangladeshi. I told them we were Indian. I asked my mother to send my Aadhaar card, PAN card and other documents. They said that we had obtained all these documents by paying money,” she told FoEJ Media.
Sweety said she pleaded repeatedly with the authorities to release her.
“I folded my hands and pleaded with them. I did everything I could,” she said.
She alleged she was then told she would be released on one condition, a payment of Rs 3 lakh. “They said they would release us on one condition and demanded Rs 3 lakh. Where would I have got Rs 3 lakh from?” she asked, with fear still engulfing her face.
When the money could not be arranged, Sweety said she was taken from Delhi to Guwahati, and from there toward the India-Bangladesh border in Assam. They were pushed across the border and left in a forest late at night.
“They left us in the forest around midnight or 1 am,” she recalled.
“Wherever we looked, there was only forest,” she added.
What followed were ten days spent searching for a way out, with no food or water. “For ten days we remained in the jungle. It was extremely difficult. There was nothing to eat or drink,” she said.
As they moved through the forest, her feet were repeatedly injured. “Nails were piercing my feet and I was getting scratched by thorns,” she recalled with pain still in her eyes.
Despite the injuries, Sweety along with her child kept walking, crossing water and pushing through the forest, until, after ten days, they finally spotted a village.
“After ten days, after crossing the jungle and the water, we saw a village,” she said.
“While we were there in the village, a man saw us and asked what had happened. He gave us food to eat. We had eaten a proper meal after 10 days,” she added.
However, reaching the village did not end the ordeal, Sweety was taken into custody and subsequently sent to Bangladeshi jail. “Then we remained in jail there,” she said, recalling that they spent much of their time crying. “We used to cry so much. We cried all the time,” she said.
Their detention was followed by a legal battle in India over their return and citizenship, which eventually reached the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court. The Calcutta High Court had directed the Union government to bring the group back to India; the Centre challenged that order before the Supreme Court, which subsequently directed that the group be brought back first, with their citizenship claims to be examined in India. The Centre later told the court it would facilitate their return.
More than a year after they were sent away, Sweety, her sons and Sheikh returned to India through the Mahadipur land port in Malda on July 8, 2026. However, coming home has not erased the fear of what happened. The memory of those ten days, walking through an unfamiliar forest with her children, crossing water, injured and unsure whether they would find a way out, remains vivid.
