“We are not Bangladeshis, we are Indians. Why are they doing this to us?

“I’m worried that if my child is born in Bangladesh, his nationality will change,” said pregnant Sunali Khatun, 25. She was deported to a neighboring country in June and returned to India earlier this month.

Ms Khatun, a domestic worker from the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, was detained in Delhi with her husband Danish Sheikh and their eight-year-old son and deported to Bangladesh on suspicion of illegal immigration. Bangladeshi authorities later imprisoned the family for illegal entry.

Her expulsion made national headlines and was heavily criticized by the West Bengal government, which blamed the BJP-led federal government for expel her without reason. She is one of hundreds of people detained and deported to Bangladesh over the past few months on suspicion of illegal immigration.

Delhi has yet to provide official data on these expulsions, but a major source in the Bangladeshi government Earlier told the BBC In May alone, more than 1,200 people were “illegally pushed in.” In the same month, the government-run All India Radio report Around 700 people have been repatriated from Delhi.

Crackdowns on Bangladeshi immigrants are not new in India. The two countries have close cultural ties, with a 4,096-kilometer (2,545-mile) border spanning five states. Like other border regions, West Bengal has long seen waves of migrants seeking work or fleeing religious persecution.

but rights activists say The latest deportations targeted Muslims who spoke Bengali, the language spoken in both West Bengal and Bangladesh, and were carried out without due process.

Ms. Caton and her family, along with three neighbors – all Bengali-speaking Muslims – were deported after Delhi’s Foreign Regional Registration Office said they lacked documents proving their legal entry or stay in India. Her seven-year-old daughter was left at home because she was staying with relatives when the family was detained.

Under the agreement, authorities must verify the declarations of suspected illegal immigrants with their countries of origin. Samirul Islam, chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board, told the BBC that this approach had not been taken in Ms Katun’s case.

The BBC has written to Delhi’s home department, which oversees the deportations.

In December last year, India’s Supreme Court asked the federal government to allow Ms. Catton and her son to return to the country on “humanitarian grounds” while conducting an inquiry into her citizenship. Since then, she has been living with her parents in West Bengal. Her husband has been released on bail and remains in Bangladesh with a relative.

Ms Catton said she had mixed feelings about being allowed to return to India.

She is relieved that her baby, due in January, will become an Indian citizen by birthright, but she is anxious about her husband, whom she has not seen for more than three months since they were imprisoned in separate cells in Bangladesh.

During video calls, she said, he often broke down and said he wanted to go home.

“We are not Bangladeshis, we are Indians. Why are they doing this to us?” Ms. Khatun asked.

She claimed that about a week after being detained by Delhi police, her family and neighbors were flown to the India-Bangladesh border and “pushed” across by paramilitary personnel of the Border Security Force (BSF).

“They left us in a dense forest (in Bangladesh) with many rivers and streams,” she claimed, adding that when they tried to enter India following the route shown to them by locals, BSF guards beat some of the people, including her husband, before taking them back to the forest to which they had been taken initially.

The BBC has sent questions to the BSF seeking a response to Ms Khatun’s allegations.

With the help of locals, the group traveled to Dhaka, where they wandered for several days with little food and water before being arrested and jailed. She said prison food was insufficient to meet the needs of pregnant women and her cell had no toilet.

“I was scared because it was just me and my son. All we did was cry,” she said.

The BBC has written to Bangladesh’s home affairs and prisons departments seeking a response to Sunali’s allegations.

Back in India, her family desperately went to court to prove her citizenship in order to bring her back. Her case is being heard by the Supreme Court.

“My family is torn apart,” Ms. Catton said, sitting in a shack in her parents’ home in West Bengal. She has two children, with another on the way, and says she doesn’t know how to feed them.

But she was sure of one thing.

“If we lived here, we probably wouldn’t make enough money for three meals, but I would never go back to Delhi,” she said.

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