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West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Saturday said that his government will be cautious in identifying alleged undocumented immigrants to ensure that cases such as the one involving Sunali Khatun are not repeated, The Telegraph reported.
Last year, Khautun and her eight-year-old son were forced into Bangladesh by Indian authorities on claims that they were undocumented immigrants. The Birbhum resident was pregnant at the time.
She was brought back to India on December 5, 2025, after the Supreme Court, taking note of her advanced pregnancy, asked the Union government whether the mother and the son could be returned to India.
The Union government had said it would bring Khatun back on humanitarian grounds, but “without prejudice” to New Delhi’s “contentions on merits and our right to put them under surveillance”.
Adhikari on Saturday asserted that undocumented immigrants would not be allowed to stay in West Bengal, and would be sent back, The Telegraph reported. However, he said that unlike the “previous regime”, the state government would not be very cautious in sending undocumented immigrants to Bangladesh.
“No Indian citizen would face difficulties,” The Telegraph quoted Adhikari as saying.
Khatun was forced into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force, which reports to the Union home ministry.
On June 7, Adhikari had said that 4,800 alleged undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh who are not eligible for citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act have been deported in the past month.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leader had said that 836 more “illegal infiltrators” who are currently in holding centres will soon be deported to Bangladesh.
The holding centres were ordered to be set by the state government on May 22 for alleged undocumented immigrants and for released foreign prisoners awaiting deportation or repatriation.
Since the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian.
Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.
Scroll has also reported on several cases of persons who were forced into Bangladesh being brought back to India, as the authorities had failed to follow the process laid down by the Union home ministry for such deportations.
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