Indian Muslim woman forced into Bangladesh gets bail after 2 months
Court orders 68-year-old from Assam into care of Bangladeshi women who sheltered her, ending weeks of detention after an India–Bangladesh border pushback
DHAKA, Bangladesh (MNTV) — A court in Bangladesh’s capital has granted bail to a 68-year-old Indian Muslim woman from the border state of Assam, after she spent 57 days in jail in Dhaka following what her family says was a forced pushback by Indian border forces.
Sakhina Begum, a resident of Nalbari district in India’s northeastern state of Assam, was granted bail on Sunday by Dhaka Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Zakir Hossain.
The judge ordered that she be placed in the custody of the Bangladeshi women who had sheltered her before her arrest and asked police to report back on her situation within a week, according to The Daily Star.
Sakhina’s ordeal began months earlier along the India–Bangladesh frontier, a heavily militarized border that cuts through villages and farmland. Her family in Assam and Sakhina herself say personnel from India’s Border Security Force pushed her across the border into Bangladesh, leaving her disoriented and alone in a country where she knew no one.
For several weeks she wandered through Dhaka, ending up in Bhashantek, a low-income neighbourhood in the city’s Mirpur area. Local women took her in when they found her exhausted, barefoot and injured, and nursed her back to health.
They later managed to trace her home village in Assam through online searches and media contacts. Her situation became public after a BBC Bangla report about her case went viral.
Shortly afterwards, police in Bhashantek filed a complaint under Bangladesh’s Control of Entry Act, a 1952 law that criminalizes entering the country without valid documents. Sakhina was arrested on September 25 and sent to jail the following day.
Court records show that she was denied bail three times between mid-October and November 10, even though the offence is bailable and carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison or a small fine. A previous order acknowledged that she is an Indian citizen but argued that she might abscond if released.
Assam, which borders Bangladesh, has for years been at the centre of India’s citizenship crisis. Bengali-origin Muslims in the state are frequently portrayed by politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as “illegal migrants,” and rights groups say verification drives and detention policies have deepened fears of statelessness.
In that context, campaigners argue, elderly and poor Muslims like Sakhina are particularly vulnerable to abuses ranging from arbitrary detention to cross-border expulsions.
Her lawyer says there are now no legal obstacles to Sakhina’s release following Sunday’s bail decision, and that she is expected to be freed once prison formalities are completed.
When she leaves jail, she is due to return to the care of the same Bangladeshi family who sheltered her when she first arrived in Dhaka, while longer-term questions about her eventual repatriation to India remain unresolved.
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