Red tape unravels, kids go home

From The Telegraph

OUR CORRESPONDENT

The five children at the border gate at Malon in North Dinajpur on Monday. Picture by Nantu Dey Malon (North Dinajpur), Aug. 10: Bangladeshi children Krishna and Anima, separated from their parents because of red tape in Dhaka, were finally sent home with three other children yesterday. The return of Krishna, 14, and Anima, 12, came about after The Telegraph reported in its July 10 edition how a bureaucratic lapse in Dhaka had split the Bangladeshi family of four. Madan and Malati Barman were separated from their minor children when they set foot on home soil on June 30 after serving a jail term in India for infiltration. The three other children, all boys, sent back had been caught by the BSF from the border on June 23. They had strayed into the Indian territory while fishing in a creek. On Saturday, the state Juvenile Justice Board had “recommended” to the North Dinajpur district administration that arrangements be made to send the three back as soon as possible. But the deputy inspector-general of the BSF in the Raiganj sector, Jaswant Singh, decided to take up Krishna and Anima’s case as well. “I told my officers to raise the case of the brother and sister as the Bangladesh deputy high commission in Calcutta confirmed in writing to the Indian external affairs ministry that the two children were bona fide Bangladeshi nationals and had agreed to their early repatriation,” said Singh. The BDR officers were shown the letter from the deputy high commission. “They were convinced and agreed to take back all the five and asked us to bring the children to the border at 10am on Monday. I had read The Telegraph report on how the two children had got separated from their parents,” said Singh. The siblings had been caught along with Madan and Malati in 2007. The parents were “pushed back” to Bangladesh on June 30, but the BDR denied the children entry saying their names were not on the list of people to be sent back. Since then, the kids were being kept at a Raiganj welfare home. “I did not believe Krishna when he told me that we would be returning home. I had been feeling sad initially when I came to know that (only) the three (other) boys were going to be released,” Anima said, before getting into a van. The other kids were just as delighted. One of them, Muntu Ali, said he was so happy he couldn’t sleep after being told they would return home.