Originally taken to Sochi, he was soon transferred to a hospital in Sukhumi, where he remained until reuniting with his family in Aghdam. He then moved to Krasnodar, where the Crimean Regional Committee in exile was located, before returning to Crimea as soon as Nazi forces were expelled from the peninsula in April 1944. Upon return to Crimea, he was appointed first deputy commissar of regional agriculture and started to draw up a plan for the development of local agriculture in the war-torn peninsula. He did not remain in Crimea for very long; since he was a Crimean Tatar, he was deported from Crimea on 18 May 1944 and sent to Central Asia. Initially, he was sent to the Pakhta Uchun Kurash collective farm, but he was allowed to move to a state farm in Ferghana, where his wife and children were deported to. In exile, he worked in agriculture, eventually getting a job at a nursery, where he developed several pear varieties.[2][6]
Ilya Vergasov, a Russian writer controversial for taking extreme creative liberties in his memoirs, falsely depicted Osmanov as a German spy that was eventually shot for treason in one of the early editions of his book In the Mountains of Tavria; Osmanov had faithfully served the partisan movement and been evacuated from Crimea for medical reasons in 1942. Soon after the book's publication, he became aware of the slanderous depiction of him in the book and publicly rebuked it. Eventually, many of Vergasov's outlandish claims and contradictions became the subject of closer scrutiny, resulting in the slanderous fabrications being removed in later editions published after the content of the books was scrutinized by the central committee and other Crimean partisans who noticed Vergasov's lies.[3][7]
With a secure job and a reputation as a respected agronomist and war veteran, he became an active campaigner for Crimean Tatar civil rights and one of the co-founders of the original movement, frequently meeting with other prominent Crimean Tatars in exile including Mustafa Selimov and Dzhebbar Akimov to discuss the issue. Despite his strong communist beliefs, he was eventually expelled from the Communist Party in 1966 for a letter to Brezhnev highlighting the Crimean Tatar plight and outlining the proper Leninist recourse in the form of permitting the right of return to previous places of residence in Crimea, restoration of the Crimean ASSR, political rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatar nation, reparations, among other reconciliatory measures. In that era, such attitudes and activism were highly frowned upon by the party, which pursued a policy of demanding that "People of Tatar nationality who formerly lived in Crimea" remain in Asia instead of desiring a return to Crimea, much to the discontent of the majority of Crimean Tatars. His son Yuri Osmanov followed in his footsteps and became a prominent leader of the Crimean Tatar civil rights movement in later years.[8][9][10][11]
After his wife Mariya died in 1974, Bekir Osmanov decided to return to Crimea and face the barrage of challenges in doing so. Her funeral was attended by many Crimean Tatars in diaspora, some of whom even travelled from Nukus to pay their respects in the ceremony in Fergana. Upon his return to Crimea, he obtained a house in Dmitrovo, but initially, he was denied a residence permit, a major barrier to the right of return for exiled Crimean Tatars. Only after living in Crimea illegally for a year and a half was he granted a residence permit. He lived there for the remainder of his life and suffered from quite poor health for those years before he eventually died on 26 May 1983, shortly after his son Yuri was sentenced to three years in prison for activism. After he died, authorities approached his other son Artyom, offering to help pay for the funeral if they kept it small; Artyom rejected the proposal, the family held a huge funeral attended by many Crimean Tatars, but Yuri was not granted a release from prison to attend it. He was buried in Donskoye (Besh-Terek) next to Musa Mamut.[2][12][13][14]
