Pushed back into Bangladesh last year, 6 men from Murshidabad will vote to prove where they belong

For years, elections for Minarul Sheikh were about the familiar litany of roads, jobs, ration and the hope that something might change.

This time, standing outside his mud-walled house at Beldanga in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, with a plastic folder containing documents tucked under his arm, the 34-year-old said he would walk to the polling booth not merely to vote, but to take back what was “snatched” from him — the right to belong.