A third batch of former exclave residents in Panchagarh district left the country to move to India yesterday.
Thirty families comprising 152 people, all residents of the now absorbed Dahla Khagrabari exclave in the district’s Debiganj upazila, left their old lives in Bangladesh behind to start a new one in India.
The residents gathered at the premises of Debiganj Degree College on Monday evening, where their belongings were checked by Customs and Border Guard Bangladesh officials.
Around 9:30am yesterday, Mohammad Golam Azam, additional district magistrate in Panchagarh, handed the relevant documents of the exclave residents over to Rmakanta Gupta, first secretary at the Indian High Commission in Bangladesh. Then, under the supervision of Gupta and Debiganj Upazila Executive Officer Md Shafiqul Islam, the residents got on four buses and started off for India.
As they were about to get on the buses, the former exclave residents broke down in tears as their families and friends remaining behind tried to console them.
Maya Rani, one of the residents, was sobbing earnestly when she got on the bus that would take her away from her birthplace, away from her family and friends, forever.
She gave birth to daughter Ekadoshi Rani only three days ago and was lamenting that her daughter would not get to know her birthplace at all.
“My husband Madan Chandra Roy wants to go to India. It is because of him that I have to leave my parents, my family, my life here behind,” said a crying Maya.
Her anguish was echoed by a number of people. One of them, school student Jharna Hembram, was crying on the shoulder of a friend.
“Having to leave my friends here is the hardest,” she said.
The group crossed over to India via the Chilahati-Haldibari route at Domar upazila in Nilphamari in the afternoon.
Sources in Panchagarh administration said 150 people originally enlisted to move to India, but the number climbed to 152 as two of the women gave birth days before leaving.
