The Malda district administration made elaborate arrangements on Thursday to receive the family of Muktar Khan, the 40-year-old migrant worker who had alleged torture by Delhi police, promising him and his wife “a good and safe life”.
They reached Malda town this morning and left for their village, Phirojabad in Chanchal-I block, around 75km away.
Muktar and his wife Sajnoor Parvin said it would not be easy for them to overcome their “trauma” in Delhi where cops “abused and manhandled” them, suspecting them to be Bangladeshi infiltrators.
Parvin on Wednesday had spoken to reporters at Calcutta’s Trinamool Bhavan — in the presence of senior party leaders like Firhad Hakim, Kunal Ghosh, Samirul Islam and others — on their ordeal.
On Thursday, her husband Muktar said: “We had lost all hopes of returning home. But chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s timely intervention made it possible.”
Muktar, who worked as a cleaning staff in Delhi for over 15 years, said: “We earned well in Delhi. Everything was going well. But things changed in the past couple of months when we returned to Delhi after our brief break in the village.”
Parvin recounted their nightmare started last Friday when Delhi cops “branded” them as Bangladeshis. She repeated what she said in Calcutta about their being roughed up by cops, who didn’t spare manhandling her 18-month-old son, the youngest of her three kids. On being detained that day, she said they were released after paying ₹25,000 to the cops.
After the chief minister posted the video of them being manhandled by Delhi cops on her X handle on Sunday evening, which the saffron ecosystem branded as fake, the family was picked up by the Delhi police that same night.
“I and my wife, our three minor children, my father Ajmal Khan and my mother Farida Bibi got inhuman treatment in police custody,” alleged Muktar.
Like in Calcutta, the couple on Thursday repeated they were forced to sign Hindi and English documents, which they could barely understand.
“We were so frightened that we signed them. We were freed on Monday night,” said Parvin.
Helped by the Bengal government, the family reached Calcutta on Wednesday.
On Thursday, they reached Malda by the NJP-bound Vande Bharat Express and were kept in the Malda zilla parishad guest house where they had their health check-up.
District magistrate Nitin Singhania said they were making provisions for a good and safe life for the family.
“We will arrange a respectable source of income for Muktar and his wife. Their children’s education will be arranged by the administration. Doctors will monitor their health. The family will get facilities of all state schemes they are entitled to,” he said.
For now, two constables and eight civic volunteers are guarding their house.
Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, the TMC MLA of Chanchal, who met them on Thursday, said: “The state has sanctioned Rs 1.5 lakh primarily for a concrete house for the family.”
“We are grateful to the chief minister and the state government. But the atrocities we endured in Delhi will remain vivid in our memory,” Muktar said.
Political observers said that backing Muktar’s family was a part of Trinamool’s broader strategy before the 2026 state polls.
“Trinamool wants to drive home the point that the state government will extend all possible help to affected migrant workers if they return home to consolidate its support base and exert pressure on the BJP,” said an observer.
The BJP claimed the Khan family’s charges were baseless. “Senior officers of the Delhi police have clarified that the charges levelled by the couple are baseless and motivated. Trinamool is in a spot. Hence it is using the administrative mechanism to hide the mess,” claimed Pratap Singha, the BJP chief of Malda (north) organisational district.