At least thirteen Indian citizens from West Bengal were deported to Bangladesh in 2025 without an inquiry. Sunali Khatun’s case shows how a process designed to remove non-citizens reached her — and what the Calcutta High Court has ordered the state to fix.
Sunali Khatun spent five months in a Bangladeshi jail after Indian authorities deported her without an inquiry or any meaningful verification. She is an Indian citizen. Her case, and at least a dozen like it from West Bengal in 2025, exposes a deportation process that treats documentation as decisive and the people behind it as procedural.
This is the story of how that machinery works, who it touches, and why the courts are starting to notice.
A case that should not have happened
Sunali was picked up in a routine sweep, told she was a foreign national, and processed for deportation within days. The form she was asked to sign was in English. The interview was in Hindi. Her family in Birbhum learned where she was only after Bangladeshi officials, finding her papers in order, allowed her one phone call.
At no point in those five days did any Indian authority cross-check her name against the electoral roll she has been on since 2019, the Aadhaar she has held since 2014, or the ration card her father carried before her.
The procedure that did not happen
Deportation in India is meant to follow a Foreigners Tribunal order, an opportunity to be heard, and a verification with the receiving country. Sunali's case had none of those. The order naming her was signed by an officer who had not interviewed her. The receiving country was not consulted; Bangladesh's surprise on her arrival is what eventually got her home.
The Calcutta High Court, asked to review the case in September 2025, called the procedure "compressed beyond recognition" and ordered the state to identify every similar removal in the past three years. The list, when it came, ran to thirteen names. All thirteen carried Indian documentation.
What the pattern suggests
Indian citizens are not supposed to be deported. That a process designed to remove non-citizens reached Sunali at all suggests one of two failures: a verification step that does not function, or a procedural step that has been removed. Both deserve scrutiny.
Decode contacted the Ministry of Home Affairs, the West Bengal home department, and the BSF for comment. None responded by the time of publication. We will update this story when they do.
Edited by Kabir Singh