Kolkata: Jalil Akhtar – unlike many others across the state – passed the identity test that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls put the people of West Bengal through for several months late la…

Kolkata: Jalil Akhtar – unlike many others across the state – passed the identity test that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls put the people of West Bengal through for several months late last year and early this year. He even cast his vote in the Assembly elections in April-May this year. Yet the 66-year-old former daily-wage labourer has been held in detention facilities ever since the police carried out a late-night raid at his home at Bagroi, Dalkhola, in Uttar Dinajpur district of the state on June 19 and picked him up, allegedly on suspicion of being a citizen, not of India, but of neighbouring Bangladesh. “We have been running from pillar to post for the past two-and-a-half months to get him back home,” Jalil’s neighbour and cousin, Matiur Rahman, told DH on Thursday. Bengaluru’s SIR puzzlesJalil’s wife, Taupha Bibi, is a diabetic, and the stress and anxiety over the past several weeks have sent her blood sugar levels soaring, leaving her too ill to speak. Matiur said that Jalil had all the documents required to prove himself a bona fide citizen of India – not only a ration card and an Aadhaar card, but also an Electoral Photo Identity Card and old land ownership records of his father. The 1995 and 2002 electoral rolls list him as a registered voter. He was also on the 2026 list of voters, released following the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls. He did cast his vote in the state Assembly elections this year. “We don’t understand how he could be branded as an illegal migrant from Bangladesh, when his documents clearly showed that he was a citizen of India,” said Matiur.   The family alleged that police had first held him at a “holding centre” at Nizampur, Chakulia in Uttar Dinajpur district itself, before sending him to another “holding centre” at Fulbari in Siliguri district so that the Border Security Force (BSF) could send him across the India-Bangladesh border. The holding centres are facilities set up by West Bengal’s Bharatiya Janata Party government to detain suspected illegal migrants who allegedly entered India from Bangladesh and settled in the state’s border districts, before the BSF could send them back. After the family presented several documents to the senior police and administrative officials in Uttar Dinajpur to establish the genuineness of Jalim’s claim to Indian citizenship, the BSF did not send him to Bangladesh. He was brought back to the “holding centre” in Uttar Dinajpur but was not released. The police on July 22 produced him in a local court as an illegal migrant, and the court sent him to judicial remand. SIR | No-mapping discrepancies will be reviewed, clarifies EC“He did not commit any offence, but he is still languishing in jail,” Rahman said from the village in the Uttar Dinajpur district. “It is imperative that the Director General of Police, West Bengal, personally looks into the matter, ensures that Jalil Akhtar’s citizenship documents are properly examined, and takes appropriate steps to protect him if he is found to be a genuine citizen of India,” Samirul Islam, a Rajya Sabha member of the Trinamool Congress, noted in a post on X. Jalil’s case echoes the ordeal of two Birbhum families who were pushed into Bangladesh last year after being detained in Delhi on suspicion of being illegal migrants. Sunali Khatun, who was pregnant at the time, and her eight-year-old son were brought back to India in December following the Supreme Court’s intervention. Her husband, Danish Sheikh, and Sweety Bibi and her two sons remained in Bangladesh until their return in May this year. The illegal migration from Bangladesh to India was a major poll issue for the BJP, which had a landslide victory in the just-concluded assembly elections in the state, routing the Trinamool Congress, which had ruled the state for 15 years since 2011.    The BJP accused the then government led by Mamata Banerjee of helping illegal migrants from Bangladesh to India settle in West Bengal and turning them into a vote bank for her TMC. The saffron party alleged during the campaign that the TMC’s policy of turning a blind eye to illegal migration of Muslims from across the Bangladesh-India border had not only changed the demographic profile of the border districts of West Bengal but also posed threats to Hindus as well as to national security. Soon after taking office on May 9, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that any person who had migrated from Bangladesh to India through illegal means would no longer be produced in the courts if caught by police or the Railway Protection Force personnel in West Bengal. They would rather be handed over to the BSF for sending them across the border. He later claimed on June 7 that around 4,800 illegal migrants had been sent across India’s border with Bangladesh in the preceeding few weeks.  

Source: Deccan Herald