5-yr-old Bangla boy is reunited with his family

Nurul told the The Indian Express over the phone that they always believed that Roni had actually strayed into Indian territory through the porous border (there are reportedly many gaps in the border fence in Dhubri sector), but the real story came to light through a news item in Prothom Alo, a Bengali daily newspaper from Bangladesh.

In June (around the time PM Narendra Modi visited Dhaka), the newspaper carried at least two items giving details of how Roni actually fell into the BSF’s hands. Quoting family sources in Kurigram district in Bangladesh, the newspaper said, five years ago Roni’s parents had paid a trafficker to cross the border and had reached Sonepat in Haryana where the couple found work in a brick kiln.

When the couple crossed over to India, Roni was only six-months-old. In March, his father Joynal decided to send Roni back to Bangladesh to attend a Bengali school, and contacted a trafficker named Moinuddin, who brought the boy to the border village of Takamari in Dhubri to send him across.

But it was Moinuddin’s ill-luck that the BSF troops found the boy in a house in Takamari on the night of April 11. And when Joynal learnt about his son, he started looking for ways to get his son back.

Finally on Wednesday, Roni went home to his family, this time legally crossing over to his home country through the border gate in Jalpaiguri.