He was a “Bangladeshi” in India. In Bangladesh, he was arrested for being an Indian.

On the eve of Independence Day, Indian citizen Amir Sheikh, 20, a resident of Jalalpur village in Malda’s Kaliachak, wondered why his country did not trust him.

“Here, the police said I am a Bangladeshi. When I was pushed to Bangladesh, they arrested me as an Indian citizen. Then please tell me, which is my country?” asked the young migrant worker, who was allegedly deported to Bangladesh last month.

After a long fight, including in Calcutta High Court, his father, Jiyem Sheikh, finally got his son back on Wednesday evening, as the BSF handed Amir over to the Basirhat police.

“I faced complete injustice. I am a poor construction worker and I roam across states as the sole breadwinner of my family. I did not deserve such atrocities,” Amir told The Telegraph while describing his ordeal since June 19 when Rajasthan police detained him on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi.

Amir said that he started working young, since 2021. In these four years, he had worked in Bihar, Maharashtra and Delhi. This April, for the first time, he moved to Rajasthan for work, following the advice of a contractor.

“I was living in Rajasthan for the past two-and-a-half months. On June 19, Rajasthan police detained me, claiming that I was a Bangladeshi,” said Amir.

“I repeatedly requested the Rajasthan police to see all documents that establish that I was not a Bangladeshi but an Indian. However, they did not listen to me and sent me to jail,” said Amir, who is the father of a one-year-old son.

He claimed that suddenly last month he was flown to Calcutta and handed over to the BSF in Basirhat. On July 23, he was deported to Bangladesh, he said.

“The BSF (personnel) opened a gate and instructed me to walk straight and enter Bangladesh. They threatened that if I turned right or left, I would be shot. I had no other option but to walk straight,” said Amir.

As soon as he reached Bangladeshi territory, Amir was arrested by the Border Guard Bangladesh and handed over to the Satkhira police station.

On July 27, Amir was produced before a Bangladesh court in Satkhira on charges of entering Bangladeshi territory as an Indian citizen without a passport.

Since then, he had been in a Bangladesh jail as an infiltrator before being granted bail on August 12 by a court of the neighbouring country.

Ajmoul Sheikh, Amir’s uncle, told The Telegraph: “The Indian government claimed my nephew was a Bangladeshi and that is why he was sent to Bangladesh. Now we have a document from the Bangladesh court showing he was arrested as an Indian citizen infiltrating their country. Was there any need for this harassment?”

Amir’s family members back in Jalalpur had no idea about his fate until a video showing him crying and narrating his ordeal in Bangladesh surfaced on social media last month.

To prove that Amir was an Indian citizen, his family even produced a family land deed dating back to 1941, bearing the then-British seal.

On Wednesday, the BSF handed over Amir to the Bashirhat police, and the family members received him in the evening. On Thursday morning, they visited the office of the West Bengal Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board to meet its chairperson, Samirul Islam, before starting for Malda.

On Thursday, the BSF told Calcutta High Court that Amir had “inadvertently” crossed the international border and entered Bangladesh, angering the family. Islam, Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha member who chairs the migrant workers’ welfare board, responded on X the same day, saying they would legally prove that Amir was deported to Bangladesh by the BSF.

While leaving for Malda, Amir said: “I don’t want to work outside (Bengal)
anymore.”

“I just want to see my son and mother once I reach home. But I will never forget the torture and harassment that I’ve faced in these months,” the youth added.