Sunali Khatun’s return from Bangladesh did not restore the life she and her husband had built in Delhi. A year after the family was rounded up as alleged illegal immigrants, deported across the border and brought back following Supreme Court intervention, they are living with her parents in a 42-square-foot room in Birbhum, without stable work, a secure home or complete identity documents.
Their experience exposes a difficult gap in the administration of migration and citizenship: returning a family to India resolved the immediate legal crisis, but did not restore income, housing, welfare access or the documents needed to secure those entitlements. For Sunali and Danish, displacement has moved from a border question to a daily urban and rural livelihood crisis.
The family had previously depended on Delhi’s informal economy. Sunali, 26, had worked as a domestic help in the Capital for more than a decade, earning about Rs 5,000 a month. Danish worked as a rag picker and earned roughly Rs 500 a day. Together, they made around Rs 20,000 a month and paid Rs 2,000 in rent for their room. Their earnings were modest, but they had work, a place to live and enough room to save some money.
That arrangement ended in the middle of 2025, when the couple were rounded up with others as “illegal” immigrants. Sunali was pregnant at the time. The family was pushed into Bangladesh on June 26, 2025. Sunali later described spending time in jail while pregnant and fearing that giving birth there could affect her child’s citizenship.
Following the Supreme Court’s intervention, Sunali and her son returned to Bengal on December 5, 2025. Danish remained across the border for another seven months, according to the report. The family was eventually reunited, but its economic base in Delhi had disappeared. Sunali is no longer working, and Danish now takes odd jobs, including work as a helper at construction sites near the village. His earnings are at most Rs 300 a day.
That fall in income is not simply a matter of reduced wages. It represents the loss of an urban livelihood network. Delhi had offered the couple access to informal work in domestic services, waste collection and related activities. In Birbhum, Danish’s work is irregular and lower-paid, while Sunali is caring for a nine-month-old child and two older children. The family’s combined monthly income has consequently contracted from about Rs 20,000 to what Danish can earn through occasional daily work.
Sunali’s question — whether a family can survive on Rs 300 a day — captures the arithmetic of that collapse. The family is living with her parents in Paikar, a village about 262 km from Kolkata. Her two elder children attend a local government primary school, but the household remains dependent on precarious work and family support. Her daughter, aged eight, was reported to be running a fever when the family was visited.
The case also shows how documentation functions as infrastructure for survival. Sunali and Danish have Aadhaar cards carrying West Bengal addresses, but neither appeared on the electoral roll after the Special Intensive Revision. Sunali’s parents are on the roll and voted in the Assembly elections. Sunali says she lost her birth certificate in Delhi, neither she nor Danish ever had a voter card, and police seized their ration cards.
These missing or incomplete records have consequences beyond voting. They affect access to subsidised food, welfare schemes, housing applications and birth registration. A birth certificate for the couple’s son, Apon, has become difficult because Danish’s Aadhaar card does not carry his full name. The family has applied to correct it before seeking the child’s birth certificate.
The sequence matters. The family first lost its physical location and employment base, then its access to documents, and finally the administrative continuity needed to rebuild household security. The problem is therefore not only whether individuals possess identity papers. It is whether different institutions recognise the same person, family relationship and address across migration, detention, deportation and return.
The district administration has acknowledged the need for procedural assistance. Birbhum District Magistrate Dhaval Jain told The Indian Express that officials had shared contact numbers when the family was brought back and that they should apply for ration cards. He said the administration would help “as per procedure”. The statement establishes an official channel, but the family’s account indicates that the immediate challenge is navigating that procedure while lacking income and complete documentation.
The difference between being told to apply and successfully receiving an entitlement is central to the family’s situation. A ration card, a corrected Aadhaar record, a birth certificate and inclusion in the electoral roll each involve separate administrative steps. For a household with limited money, limited mobility and no regular official assistance, every step can become a delay. The absence of one document can prevent the next document from being issued.
Housing illustrates the same gap between promise and delivery. Sunali’s father says the family applied for a house under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana but has not heard back. Sunali says a “pucca home” was among the promises made after her return, but that nothing has happened. The family currently lives in a small structure made of mud and plastic sheets, described as a 42-square-foot room.
The account does not establish why the housing application has not progressed or whether it meets the scheme’s eligibility requirements. It does, however, show the practical difference between announcing support and completing the administrative process that turns support into a house. The family’s housing insecurity is tied to its documentation and livelihood problems, rather than existing as a separate issue.
A social worker assisting the family, Mofizul Islam, said they had obtained bank accounts and PAN cards and had linked their Aadhaar cards to phone numbers. These steps provide some formal financial and identification connections, but they have not solved the more immediate problem of employment. Islam said the family was poor and that Danish was desperately looking for work.
The political response has also changed over time. Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee visited Sunali after she gave birth at Rampurhat Medical College and Hospital on January 5, 2026, and named the child Apon, meaning “Ours”. Sunali says political visitors later stopped coming. TMC Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam told the newspaper that the party continued to help the family in whatever way it could.
That shift from intense attention during a legal and political crisis to quiet, long-term rehabilitation is a recurring governance problem in vulnerable households. Public visibility can bring visits, assurances and temporary assistance. It does not necessarily create a durable case-management system that tracks documents, income, schooling, housing and healthcare after the news cycle ends.
The legal position has become clearer. Basudeb Chakraborty, the family’s advocate, said the Centre’s plea challenging the order directing the family’s return from Bangladesh had become infructuous and that nothing was pending in court regarding their deportation. This removes one major uncertainty, but legal closure has not automatically produced economic or social recovery.
The family’s ordeal raises a broader question about responsibility when migration enforcement disrupts an informal worker’s life. Sunali and Danish had been earning in Delhi, where they were picked up, but their rehabilitation is now being addressed in Birbhum, where they have family connections but fewer livelihood opportunities. The case therefore crosses municipal and state boundaries: the city where the family worked, the border across which it was deported, and the village to which it returned are all part of one administrative chain.
It also complicates the usual distinction between migrant workers and rural households. Sunali’s family is now physically in Birbhum, but its income history, work skills and documents are tied to Delhi. Returning the household to its place of origin has not restored the conditions that once allowed it to survive. A rural address does not automatically provide rural employment, a permanent house or uninterrupted access to welfare.
Activists working with migrant communities have questioned who should take responsibility for families caught between central policy and state inaction. The evidence in this case does not establish a complete answer. It does show that responsibility is dispersed across police authorities, border and immigration systems, district administration, welfare departments, housing agencies and political representatives.
For now, the facts point to a family that has returned from a border crisis into a rehabilitation crisis. Sunali and Danish have some documents, but not all those they need. They have access to occasional work, but not a stable livelihood. They have a housing application, but no confirmed house. Their children are in school, but the household remains financially fragile.
The next measurable steps are administrative rather than political: correction of Danish’s Aadhaar details, issuance of Apon’s birth certificate, restoration or approval of ration access, progress on the housing application and a stable source of work. Until those steps are completed, the family’s return to India will remain a legal fact without becoming a secure return to everyday life.
