Published : 09 Oct 2026, 09:37 PM
Updated : 09 Oct 2026, 09:37 PM
A judge at the Calcutta High Court has said in open court that no one can be deported from India without following the legal process and based on mere suspicion that they are Bangladeshi.
Justice Saugata Bhattacharya made the comment on Thursday while hearing a petition challenging the detention of Shahidul Haque, a resident of Murshidabad, whose lawyer says he has been detained since Aug 8 for deportation to Bangladesh on the suspicion that he is a Bangladeshi national.
According to a report published online by English daily The Telegraph on Friday, Shahidul’s wife filed a petition in the High Court against the deportation order issued by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and the decision to detain her husband.
In view of this, Justice Bhattacharyya ordered that the deportation order be kept “in abeyance”. He asked how the nationality of a person could be established merely on the basis of the statements of a few neighbours.
He stressed that a person could not be detained without following due process.
“Since the 1970s, how many have crossed the border? Is it possible to send all of them back?” he asked.
Justice Bhattacharyya referred the matter back to the chief justice of the high court so it could be assigned to a “proper bench”.
The court also reportedly asked why Shahidul had been detained for two months and why the authorities had not followed a “clear and demonstrable process” to determine his nationality.
The petitioner’s lawyer, Rabiul Islam, told the court that Shahidul had been detained only on the basis of verbal complaints and the suspicions of his neighbours.
“So, the government should properly check the documents before deciding to deport any person. Based on statements from some people, one cannot conclude that the person concerned is an infiltrator,” Justice Bhattacharyya said.
Additional Advocate-General Rajdeep Majumdar, who represented the state, said the detainee may have obtained documents such as the voter card, Aadhaar and PAN card using forged papers.
Justice Bhattacharyya’s observation came amid a national debate in India over citizenship, identity cards and voter lists. In West Bengal, the names of about 130 million voters have been omitted from the voter list in the Special Intensified Revision (SIR) process over the last few years.
Opposition parties and civil society organizations in the state have alleged that a large number of genuine voters have been omitted to benefit the BJP. Many people whose names were omitted in West Bengal have been deprived of government benefits and are at risk of being identified as illegal citizens and deported.
