Uttar Dinajpur (West Bengal): Nearly three months after he was taken from his home in the dead of night, Jalil Akhtar (66), a resident of Bagrail village under Dalkhola police station of Uttar Dinajpur in West Bengal walked out of jail on bail on Tuesday (September 15), following court order. In the intervening night between June 19 and 20, Dalkhola police allegedly picked Akhtar from his bed, branding him a “ Bangladeshi”. The operation was carried out so discreetly that even his wife, Bibi Toufa, had no idea that the police had entered their home and taken her husband away.Three months of fear, uncertainty and a fight for freedomOn September 15, Uttar Dinajpur Additional District Judicial Magistrate Jamsed Sheikh granted Akhtar bail, subject to certain conditions. The court directed him to fully cooperate with the investigation until the case is disposed of and barred him from leaving the area without permission.Jalil Akhtar in Islampur Court after being released on bail on September 15. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.Hours after the order, Akhtar walked out of the Islampur sub-correctional center. “If these two lawyers had not stood by me, I would never have been able to come out of jail. They fought my case entirely free of cost. Even the court papers were purchased and arranged by Sahid Reza at his own expense,” Akhtar told The Wire, his two lawyers, Sahid Reza and Abu Bakkr Khalid Saifulla stood next to him, as he walked out of the correctional center. He added that the Rs 10,000 that had to be deposited with the court as a condition of his bail was also paid by Reza. “I am a poor daily wage labourer. There was no way I could have afforded the expenses of fighting such a legal battle.”“I was forcibly taken away from my home. The police took me to a BSF [Border Security Force] camp and handed me over to the BSF. The officers repeatedly pressured me to admit that I was a Bangladeshi,” Akhtar said, breaking down in tears.“How could I say something that is not true? I am an Indian citizen. I have never been to Bangladesh in my life. I was born here and grew up here. I work here as a daily-wage labourer to run my family. How can I suddenly become a Bangladeshi?’’ he asked. Akhtar said that after the BSF officers understood the situation and his confession, they handed him back to the Dalkhola police. According to him, the BSF told the police that he was a citizen of India.But his ordeal did not end there. Akhtar said that while he was kept at the police station, the holding center and later in jail, he was not allowed to meet his family. Over the course of those three months, he said, the prolonged separation and uncertainty left him physically and mentally unwell.Now, Akhtar says he is haunted by another fear: how will his neighbours and the people in his community look at him after the government labelled him a “Bangladeshi”.“I have been released on bail, but I am afraid. What will the people in my area and my society think of me now? The government has branded me a Bangladeshi. Will I ever be able to live a normal life again? Will I be dragged from one place to another again in the name of an investigation?’’ he asked this reporter. “ If it happens, I will not be able to survive.”How did a poor-elderly labourer end up being branded a “Bangladeshi”?Jalil Akhtar and his wife Bibi Toufa at their home on September 16. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.Akhtar lives in Bagrail village, around 40 kilometers from Raiganj town and 25 kilometres from Dalkhola police station under Uttar Dinajpur district. He was born here and has spent his entire life in the village. He has two sons and two daughters. His daughters are married, while both his sons work as migrant labourers in Delhi and Hyderabad. At home, he lives with his wife, Toufa.Akhtar owns no agricultural land. He works as a daily wage labourer and takes up whatever work he can find to keep his family afloat. His house, too, reflects his precarious circumstances – old, worn out and in a state of disrepair.Recalling the night the police took him, he said, “All I could ask was, ‘Why are you taking me away?’ The police told me, ‘You have come here from Bangladesh. You will be sent back to Bangladesh.’”“I pleaded with them, ‘I am from this country. What you are doing is wrong.’ But the police would not listen,” Akhtar told The Wire. Akhtar said he then asked the policemen to wait for a moment so that he could call his wife. “But they [police] did not give me any time. They pulled me away, put me into their vehicle and took me to Dalkhola police station,” he said.When Toufa woke up, Akhtar was nowhere to be seen. “I thought perhaps my husband had gone to offer namaz. When he did not return for a long time, we started looking for him and asking around. Later people from the village told us that the police had come to the village during the night. They asked us, ‘Could it be that the police came and took him away?’’’ Toufa recalled. The incident sent a wave of fear through the village. “As soon as we heard that the police had taken Jalil away, we went to the local police camp. An officer there told us that Jalil Akhtar was a Bangladeshi and that he would be sent to Bangladesh. We were told that he was being handed over to the BSF,’’ said Matiur Rahman, Akhtar’s cousin.Alarmed by what they were told, the family gathered Akhtar’s Aadhaar card, voter ID, ration card, land documents and other records establishing his identity and residence and went to Dalkhola police station. “We showed the police all the documents. They told us they were looking into the matter,” Rahman said. It was at the police station that the family learnt that Akhtar had been taken to the Nizampur detention center in Chakulia. Motiur Rahaman at his home. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.Rahman told The Wire that Akhtar’s name had appeared on the electoral rolls as far back as 2002. At the time, his name was listed at serial number 506 in part 115 of the Karandighi assembly constituency.In 2026, the area fell under the 31 Chakulia assembly constituency, where Akhtar’s name continues to appear on the electoral roll at part 223, serial number 890. Akhtar cast his vote in the last assembly election and despite his long-standing presence on the electoral rolls, the police did not release him. Rahman said the family repeatedly requested the police to let Akhtar go. According to him, an officer of Dalkhola police station responded: ‘You keep asking us to release him. Do you know what kind of pressure I am under? I have been given a list of 500 people and have been told to apprehend them. Even today, another 30 names have come.’“From this, we understood that this was being done deliberately,” Rahman said.Akhtar was kept at the Nizampur detention camp for 15 days, Rahman mentioned. He was then taken to the BSF’s 87th battalion camp, where he spent another five days and was repeatedly questioned. “After questioning him continuously, the BSF realised that Akhtar was an Indian citizen. They then handed him back to Dalkhola police,’’ Matiur said.From there, Akhtar was sent once again to the detention center, this time at Kadarganj. Then began what the family describes as a relentless cycle of being moved from one place to another. After Akhtar was taken away from the BSF camp, Rahman said, BSF personnel came to their village to conduct an inquiry. They examined the documents and information provided by the family and, according to Rahman, told them that Akhtar was an Indian citizen. Even then he was not released.On July 22, Akhtar was produced before a court in Islampur where the police identified him as a Bangladeshi national. Also read: Jalil Akhtar: Valid Indian Documents, Cleared SIR in 2002 and 2026, Yet Arrested as ‘Bangladeshi’In its report, the police claimed that Akhtar was actually a resident of Andharahamatpur village in Haripur police station under Thakurgaon district. The police also cited a directive of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs dated September 1, 2025 to inform the court that Akhtar was a foreign national.Akhtar’s lawyer, Reza told The Wire that when he was produced before the Islampur court on July 22, the defence submitted documents and sought bail. “The court did not grant bail at that stage. Instead, it directed the police to verify all the information [provided by Akhtar’s lawyer] and submit a report by July 28,’’ Reza said. However, on July 28, the investigating officer sought more time instead of submitting the report. The court then fixed August 1 as the next deadline for report.The police eventually submitted a report on August 5. According to Reza, however, the report did not contain any verification of the documents submitted by the Aktar family to establish his Indian citizenship. Instead, the investigating officer submitted the report relating to the FIR registered against Akhtar. “Because the police did not verify the citizenship documents that had been placed before them, the court was dissatisfied with the report,’’ Reza said. Subsequently, on August 19, the police submitted another report stating that Akhtar’s voter ID and ration card were valid, Reza said. On September 10, the court directed that the matter would be heard again on September 14 and asked Jalil’s family members to be present.Jalil Akhtar’s home at Bagrail under Dalkhola Police station in Uttar Dinajpur. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.On September 14, his wife Toufa, and his two daughters Ruksana and Fulsuma, appeared before the court. After examining the documents and the submissions before him, Additional District Judicial Magistrate Sheikh granted Akhtar conditional bail.The three months Akhtar spent in custody after being branded a Bangadeshi had a devastating impact on his family. His wife Toufa, by the family’s account, almost stopped eating. His two sons, both migrant workers, spent those months in fear at their workplaces, worried that revealing what had happened to their father could cost them their livelihoods. “If we told people at our workplaces that our father had been arrested by the police as a Bangladeshi, we feared they would throw us out of our jobs. So we stayed silent and cried in private. We could not even return to our village,’’ they said.But one question continues to hang over the village: why was Akhtar not released despite the family producing documents to establish his identity and citizenship? The police kept him in custody for three months after branding him a Bangladeshi. But did the police find any evidence that he was a citizen of Bangladesh? The answer remains unclear. If no such evidence was found, what was the basis for keeping a 66-year-old daily-wage labourer in police and jail custody? That question, too, remains unanswered by the administration.“His [Akhtar’s] physical and mental health has suffered. We will take him to a doctor within the next couple of days. After that, we will begin the legal battle again” Rahman told The Wire.