Calcutta High Court says suspicion alone cannot justify deportation to Bangladesh
A Calcutta High Court judge on Thursday said a person cannot be labelled a Bangladeshi national and deported solely on suspicion, stressing that authorities must provide sufficient opportunity to establish citizenship.
Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya made the observations in open court while hearing a petition challenging the detention of a man from Murshidabad and a deportation order against him and his wife, reports The Telegraph Online.
The man’s lawyer, Rabiul Islam, told the court that his client had been detained since August 8 on the basis of “suspicion generated from the statements of a few neighbours”. His wife, who filed the petition challenging the Foreigners Regional Registration Office’s order, has not been detained.
Justice Bhattacharyya said the deportation order had “been kept in abeyance” and questioned whether the authorities had given the detainee a fair opportunity to establish his nationality.
“My client has been under detention for over two months. The basis of his detention was suspicion generated from the statements of a few neighbours,” Islam said.
The judge questioned how nationality could be conclusively determined through such allegations alone and why the man remained in custody without what he described as “a clear and demonstrable process” to establish his nationality.
“Since the 1970s, how many have crossed the border? Is it possible to send all of them back?” he asked.
He subsequently referred the matter back to the high court’s chief justice for assignment to “a proper bench”.
Additional advocate-general Rajdeep Majumdar, representing the state government, argued that the detainee might have obtained documents, including a voter card, Aadhaar and PAN card, using forged papers.
The observations come amid allegations that several BJP-ruled states have been branding Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers as undocumented Bangladeshis and pushing them across the border with the assistance of the Border Security Force (BSF), without court or tribunal orders.
Days after the BJP came to power in West Bengal, the new government announced a “detain, delete, deport” policy under which police were to detain suspected Bangladeshis at holding centres before deporting them.
In July, four deported Indians, including a woman and two children, were brought back through the Mahadipur land port in Malda following court orders, after spending nearly a year in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, documentation, citizenship and electoral identity have become central to a national debate over the controversial special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has seen around 13 crore voters deleted across India.
Opposition parties and civil society groups have alleged that millions of eligible voters have been excluded to benefit the BJP. Protests demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation have spread across the country.