The Calcutta High Court has said authorities cannot label a person as Bangladeshi or deport them solely on suspicion, while directing that a Murshidabad man’s proposed deportation remain on hold and questioning the process through which he was detained.
Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya made the observations in open court on Thursday while hearing a petition challenging the detention and proposed deportation of the man. His wife, who has not been detained, moved the petition against the Foreigners Regional Registration Office’s deportation order against the couple and her husband’s continued custody.
The detainee’s lawyer, Rabiul Islam, told the court that his client had been held since August 8 on the basis of suspicion arising from statements made by a few neighbours. The lawyer said the man had been in detention for more than two months. The court questioned why he continued to remain in custody and why the authorities had not followed what Justice Bhattacharyya described as a “clear and demonstrable process” to establish his nationality.
“It seems that the authorities concerned have not given a chance to the petitioner (detainee),” the judge said, according to the report. He also asked how a person’s nationality could be conclusively established merely on the basis of assertions by some individuals. The judge stressed that a person could not be detained without due process and said people should be given adequate opportunity to prove their citizenship.
The deportation order has been kept in abeyance, Justice Bhattacharyya said. He subsequently sent the matter back to the chief justice of the high court so that it could be assigned to a proper bench. The court’s observations were made at an interim stage and do not constitute a final ruling on the man’s nationality or the validity of the documents cited in the case.
Additional advocate-general Rajdeep Majumdar, appearing for the state government, suggested that the detainee may have obtained documents including a voter card, Aadhaar and PAN card using forged papers. The submission places the dispute within a wider administrative question: how authorities are expected to verify nationality when identity documents are challenged, and what procedural safeguards must precede detention or deportation.
The case comes amid a broader national debate over citizenship, documentation and electoral identity. The Telegraph report said many BJP-ruled states had, since the middle of last year, faced allegations of branding Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers as illegal Bangladeshis and pushing them across the border with the assistance of the Border Security Force without court or tribunal orders. The allegations have been made by political opponents and civil society groups.
The report also referred to four Indians, including a woman and two children, who were brought back through the Mahadipur land port in Malda in July following court orders, after spending nearly a year in Bangladesh. It further linked the current debate to a special intensive revision of electoral rolls, which the report said had deleted about 13 crore voters across India. Claims that genuine voters were excluded remain contested and have been made by opposition parties and civil society groups.
For urban and migrant households, the administrative stakes extend beyond a single detention order. Voter registration, welfare access and identity documentation are often connected to residence records and local verification. The high court’s intervention places the requirement of a demonstrable process at the centre of any action that could remove a person from the country.
The case will now be placed before a bench assigned by the chief justice. Until then, the deportation order remains in abeyance, while the questions of nationality, documentation and the legality of the detention remain to be examined.
