8 Bangladeshis back home

Eight Bangladeshi nationals, who were languishing in South Indian prisons and shelter homes for years, have finally returned home thanks to efforts by an Indian NGO and the governments of Bangladesh and India.

The efforts came following a news report published in The Daily Star last year on a Bangladeshi victim of a sex racket who wrote about her ordeals in a book during her detention at a shelter home in Kerala. In response, the Bangladesh government started looking for Bangladeshi nationals detained in different shelter homes and prisons of that state.

After visits to Kerala by Bangladeshi Consulate officers in January with the help of Arm of Joy, a South Indian NGO, the country's high commission in Delhi issued temporary travel permits to 20 Bangladeshis languishing in different jails and shelter homes in Kerala.

Of them, seven men and a young girl returned home through the Benapole checkpost on Sunday night.

Nayek Subedar Abdul Rahim, in-charge of the 26 BGB camp at Benapole checkpost, said the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) had handed them over to Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB).

The arrestees had earlier gone to India illegally in search of jobs, he added. Indian police arrested them and they were sent to jail by a court.

Of the seven male returnees, six were in Kozhikode district jail in Kerala and one boy was from an Indian government home in the same district. Thirteen other Bangladeshis -- one girl and three women and nine men -- who had travel permits could not return because the Indian authorities did not give them clearance.

Anoop Gangadharan, founder of Arm of Joy, said, "Our authorities have blocked the travel of four girls on grounds that they are needed here for court proceedings. They have been here for last eight years and still the court proceedings are not over. We are approaching the Human Rights Commission and the High Court to fight against this injustice."

Mosharaf Hossain of the Bangladeshi mission in Delhi told The Daily Star over phone that they would issue travel permits for the 13 Bangladeshis again since the previous ones expired on April 25.