New Delhi: The Union government told the Supreme Court on Friday (May 22), that Sunali Khatun’s husband, Danish Shaikh, pushed into Bangladesh from the capital in June 2025, will be brought back to India. He said the process may take eight to 10 days, Live Law reports.“My instructions are, the government will bring them back, and thereafter will examine their status, and depending on the outcome, will take steps accordingly,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted in court on Friday.Sunali was repatriated to India with her son and eight-year-old child in April 2026, after her father, Bhodu Sheikh, fought an arduous legal battle from the Calcutta High Court to the Supreme Court of India.Sheikh’s daughter and her family had been pushed into Bangladesh within 48 hours after Delhi Police detained them on “suspicion” of being Bangladesh. They were imprisoned in the neighbouring country and lived in dire straits until the Calcutta high court provided them relief.But Mehta insisted the decision to bring him back would not apply to other such deportees, effectively making the return of the pushed-out persons under consideration on Friday a one-off case.“The Solicitor General of India submits that keeping in view the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, and by not treating it as a precedent to be followed in other instances, the Government of India has decided to bring the respondents back to India and to verify the claim of Indian citizenship. Their continuation in India will depend on the outcome of such enquiry,” the court noted in its order.Senior Advocates Sanjay Hegde, Kapil Sibal and other legal stalwarts represented two sets of deportees who have been forcibly sent into Bangladesh without hearing or notice in the Supreme Court.The Wire previously reported that Sunali’s neighbour, Sweety Bibi, from Paikar village in West Bengal and working as a tailor in Delhi, was also detained by Delhi Police and sent to Bangladesh with her minor sons, where she remains.The Calcutta High Court had on September 26, 2025, ruled against both sets of detentions and deportations – of Sunali and her family and Sweety Bibi and her family – as procedurally invalid and a violation of their rights, regardless of their nationality. Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra had said they must all be returned to India “within four weeks”.The court had specifically directed the repatriation of Sweety and her sons as well, saying it could be on “temporary” basis, until their citizenship status was ascertained.The Union government had appealed the high court’s ruling in the Supreme Court, which had during a late November hearing “suggested” they be brought back and their citizenship ascertained after that.At the November hearing, Chief Justice of India Krishna Kant had asked the Union government’s counsel what his specific objections to their repatriation were, since Sunali’s father had produced documentary evidence of their long-term residence as well as deep familial ties in India.“Now there is lot of material coming on record – birth certificate, land holdings of close family members – these are kind of evidence. And evidence of probability. So what prevents you? Earlier you hardly held any enquiry. The allegation is that the deportee was never heard and you sent them. Why don’t you, at least as a temporary measure, bring them back, give them an opportunity of hearing, verify all these documents or facts and take a holistic view?” Justice Kant had said.“If there is an illegal entrant from Bangladesh, your deportation is 100% justified. Nobody will dispute. But if somebody has something to show you, that wait, I belong to India, I am born and brought up here, and I am actually an Indian national, he has a right to plead before you,” he had said, as per Live Law.The Wire had also reported Sonali’s elder brother Sujor Sheikh, who drives an electric rickshaw, saying that they are Indian citizens: “In 2003, our father Bhodu Sheikh, took us to Delhi. There, he worked as a rickshaw puller and my mother worked as a domestic worker in people’s homes. After many years, we returned to our village. How did we become Bangladeshis?”In early December 2025, the Union government had said it would bring Sunali back on “humanitarian” grounds. Four months later, in April, the Union government allowed Sunali to return to India with her son – but Danish was left behind.The bench hearing the matter on Friday comprised Chief Justice of India Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul Pancholi. a