SC allows deported pregnant woman Sonali Khatun and her child back into India

The Supreme Court on Wednesday (December 3) allowed on "humanitarian grounds" the entry of a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old child into India, months after they were pushed into Bangladesh.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked the West Bengal government to take care of the minor and directed the chief medical officer of Birbhum district to provide all possible medical assistance to the pregnant woman Sonali Khatun.

The bench noted the submission of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, that the competent authority has agreed to allow the woman and her child into the country purely on humanitarian grounds, and they would be kept under surveillance.

The top court said they would eventually be brought back to Delhi from where they were picked up and deported to Bangladesh.

‘Only on humanitarian grounds’: Centre

Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Sanjay Hegde urged the court that there were others also, including Sonali's husband who are in Bangladesh and need to be brought back to India for which Mehta may seek further instruction.

Mehta contended that he would be contesting their claim of being Indian citizens and maintained that they were Bangladeshi nationals and it was only on humanitarian grounds that the union government was allowing the woman and her child into India.

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The woman’s father alleged that the families, working as daily wage earners in Sector 26 of the Rohini area in Delhi for over two decades, were picked up by police on June 18 on suspicion of being Bangladeshis and subsequently pushed across the border on June 27.

Centre challenged HC order in SC

In September, the Calcutta High Court had asked the Centre to ensure that Sonali and her family were brought back to India within a month.

The union government, however, moved the Supreme Court to challenge the order.

Also Read: Pregnant woman, 3 kids among deportees to Bangladesh; kin move HC again

On October 22, the Ministry of Home Affairs approached the apex court to challenge the HC’s order, arguing that the latter did not have the jurisdiction since the original detention and deportation took place in Delhi.

They were living and working in Delhi when they were arrested under an “identity verification drive” and sent to Bangladesh through Assam.

Sonali was among six people who had been deported, including three minors.

No respite in Bangladesh

However, in Bangladesh too, legal trouble was awaiting the six. Four months after they were pushed into Bangladesh by Indian border officials, a court in Bangladesh recognised them as Indian citizens and instructed the Indian High Commission in Dhaka to arrange their return.

The Bangladeshi authorities also held them as illegal entrants before jailing them.

Parents’ names in 2002 voter list

Sonali’s lawyer says what makes her case strong is that the names of both her parents are in Bengal’s 2002 voter list. As per the Citizenship Act, at least one of Sonali’s parents must have been an Indian citizen at the time for her to be considered a citizen of India by birth.

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The Trinamool Congress last month also claimed that the parents of the pregnant Sonali were registered as citizens of India in the 2002 voters’ list, and alleged that the SIR of electoral rolls “is an assault on the very idea of Bengal and its people”.

The TMC had further said that to brand an expecting mother as an illegal infiltrator when her parents have been documented as Indian citizens is a “moral collapse orchestrated in the name of nationalism”.

(With agency inputs)