Solma returns from India
The first thing Solma Begum asked her brother was how her two children, aged eight and 10, were doing.
“Do they get to eat when they are hungry? Can their father feed them?” asked the woman after arriving home yesterday.
The 38-year-old had been stranded at a shelter home in India for 20 months.
She was brought to the Benapole-Petrapole point of the border around 4:30pm by the Indian authorities. She broke down in tears seeing her younger brother Asgar Ali, who went there to receive her.
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) hailed her repatriation as “a unique collaborative effort of police, civil society and judicial system in solving the case.”
The woman suffering from psychological difficulties disappeared from her village Taluk Shorbananda in Gaibandha's Sundarganj about four years ago.
Her family came to know in February last year that Solma was at a shelter home in Hooghly of West Bengal.
Hooghly police, in the evening of April 4, 2015, found Solma wandering in a village. They could not ascertain her identity as she did not speak. Police then sent her to Janasiksha Prochar Kendra where she was provided with regular counselling and treatment.
“I became attached to my sisters here in the shelter. I will miss them a lot,” she told our Kolkata correspondent as she left the shelter home.
With care she gradually regained her memories and told people about her home in Bangladesh. Rights organisations said bureaucracy and red tapes delayed her repatriation for months.
“Her story reveals the tragic plight of many innocent civilians caught in the quagmire of bureaucratic tangles on both sides of the border,” read a statement issued by CHRI yesterday.
It took over a year and persistent advocacy by CHRI and its partners, along with government officials, civil society and the media to bring her case to this juncture, the statement added.
After Solma told the staff of the shelter home about her family, the head counsellor managed to contact her family and procure all the requisite documents. Bangladesh Legal Aid Services Trust (BLAST) then contacted the CHRI.
After following up with the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Kolkata and various visits by rights bodies to the West Bengal Home Department, her nationality was verified and a repatriation order issued last month.
Citing the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) of India, CHRI said there were 6,185 foreign prisoners in India as of December 31, 2015. West Bengal's prisons housed more than half of the foreign prisoners and 98 percent of them were Bangladesh nationals.
“NCRB data does not take account of the numbers of foreigners whose prison terms are over, but remain in prison for want of assistance and means to return to their own countries. They continue to remain illegally incarcerated well past the official date of their release,” it said.
Solma's story is not unique. There remain many like her still in custodial institutions solely dependent on bureaucratic initiatives on both sides of the border for their release, it said.
“Authorities in both countries need to put official mechanisms in place to identify people and send them home,” it stressed, “Otherwise, as in the case of Solma, unnecessary confinement would continue to grow, dividing families and harming lives.”
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