Bangladeshi woman deported, sone moves Supreme Court

SC seeks Union’s response; plea challenges ‘push back’

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday sought the Centre’s response to a petition by a man alleging that his mother, released after detention of three years following a Foreigner Tribunal identifying her as a Bangladeshi, may have been forcibly pushed into Bangladesh despite her plea against the tribunal’s order pending in SC since 2017.

Appearing for Iunuch Ali, senior advocate Kapil Sibal told a partial working day bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and A G Masih that she was picked up by Dhubri police and allegedly pushed back into Bangladesh.

“How can the Dhubri SP determine whether she is a Bangladeshi immigrant? Was she produced before a magistrate after being detained? The son does not know her whereabouts. The Centre must inform him about her whereabouts,” Sibal said. SC issued notice to Centre on this plea.

Sibal also questioned the ‘push back’ of illegal Bangladeshi migrants and this is unknown to the process of law. He said the only legal process available is ‘deportation’. The petitioner said, “The law does not recognize push back, i.e arresting foreign nationals and taking them to the international border and either casting them away or pushing them across international borders without any verification and acceptance by the authorities of the other country. This is illegal, not permitted by any law.”

Petitioner's mother Monowara Bewa was declared a foreigner by Dhubri Foreigners Tribunal on March 17, 2016. The Gauhati HC upheld the tribunal’s order on Feb 28, 2017. Her appeal against the HC order is pending adjudication in the SC for the last eight years.

In the meantime, the SC in another case in 2019 ordered that foreigners cannot be kept in detention indefinitely and must be either deported to their native country or released on bail. The Centre had said that deportation is dependent on the host country accepting their citizen. Based on this 2019 judgment, Bewa was released in Dec 2019.

She was detained again on May 24, as the drive against illegal Bangladeshi immigrants picked pace after the terror attack on tourists at Pahalgam and the ‘Op Sindoor’ by Indian armed forces against terrorist bases in Pakistan. The petitioner said her detention was in violation of her rights guaranteed under Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution.