'What was the hurry': TMC's Sagarika Ghose asked govt on deportation of migrant workers to Bangladesh

New Delhi: The case of two women migrant workers from West Bengal, who were deported to Bangladesh, was raised in Rajya Sabha on Thursday by Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose, who questioned the hurry in deporting the women without proper verification. Raising the issue in the Rajya Sabha in the Zero Hour, Ghose also mentioned the Goa nightclub fire incident, and said most of those who died were migrant workers. "On June 21, Sunali Khatun, a 26-year-old heavily pregnant migrant worker, was picked up with her family by the Delhi police and deported to Bangladesh with her family, including her son. Another Bangladeshi migrant worker in Delhi, 32-year-old Sweety and her family were also picked up by Delhi Police and sent to Bangladesh," Ghose said.

She said Sunali Khatun could return to India only after the intervention of the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court. She said the Supreme Court questioned the "hot haste" and the deportation without a fair hearing, and added that a Home Ministry memo of 2025 says immediate deportation is allowed only in "emergent circumstances". "Why this desire to deport Sunali Khatun and Sweety Bibi without due process? Is it simply because of a political motive to call Bangla speaking people infiltrators and ghuspatiya?" she said.. Sunali, a pregnant woman who, along with two of her family members and others, was pushed into Bangladesh in June this year on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, had returned to India through the Malda border on December 6 with her eight-year-old son following the Supreme Court’s intervention. Sweety and her two sons, Qurban Sheikh (17) and Imam Dewan (6), were detained by police in Delhi from the same neighbourhood as Sunali on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals and subsequently pushed across the border on June 27.

Ghose said Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Delhi and Gurgaon are being "threatened". "In Vasant Kunj's Jai Hind Bengali colony, Bangla-speaking migrants are daily threatened... Bangla-speaking migrant workers in Delhi and Gurgaon have found it particularly difficult, since local police brand them as Bangladeshi, when they are bonafied citizens of this country with all identity papers," she said. She also mentioned the Goa nightclub fire, in which 25 people were killed. "When a terrible fire at a Goa nightclub killed 25 people over the weekend, many of those who died were migrant labour. When in 2020 Covid lockdown was clamped with a four hour notice it was again migrant labour who suffered the most," she said.