BY SUMI KHAN
At least 52 BSF personnel have been injured by criminals operating in both India and Bangladesh, said Border Security Force Director General Rakesh Asthana on Saturday.
The BSF DG claimed that his troopers have been instructed to fire only as a last resort.
A 13-member Bangladesh delegation, led by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) Director General Maj Gen Md Shafeenul Islam, and a six-member Indian delegation, headed by the BSF DG, joined the 50th BGB-BSF DG-level talks. The border talks began on September 17. The conference concluded with the signing of 17 points in a Joint Record of Discussions (JRD).
Speaking to IANS about the border killings, Asthana said: “I must say that our policy is to bring down the border killings to zero and we are committed to do that.”
“In order to reach the killers, we need to discuss with the BGB and have to work at the field level. The situation arises mostly due to criminal activities along the Indo-Bangla border which include narcotics, gold, weapons and ammunition.”
The BSF Chief added, “To prevent these anti-social activities across the border, we have discussed and decided that we should have real time sharing of intelligence and information about the movements of the criminals across the border and also about the activities of the syndicates who are running these rackets behind the scenes so that we can take appropriate legal action as per the law of the respective countries of the respective forces.”
He said, “I must say that the conference was extremely successful. The entire conference has been conducted in a very cordial manner. We have discussed every issue and cooperation will be there from both sides.”
“In fact the criminals are violating the law and order. In all cases our request is to investigate the background. I must say that our policy is to bring down the border killings to zero, I have joined recently and in the future you will see the progress,” the BGB DG said.
“70 per cent of deaths happen between 10 p.m. and 5.30 a.m. Normally, criminals are active during this period. Secondly, the operations have taken place inside Indian territory,” Asthana said.
A Bangladeshi scribe asked the BGB DG during the joint press conference, if the BGB has failed to stop Bangladeshi nationals from entering Indian territory.
To this, the DG replied: “The 4,427 km Bangladesh border has rivers, bushes and mountains. This is very unique and that is the peculiarity and difficulty of the border. So this is very, very difficult to check.”
The BGB DG said: “Both sides agreed to take effective steps to prevent human trafficking, share real time information for coordinated border management in curbing trans-border crime.”
Earlier, the BGB-BSF talks were postponed on September 13 as the BSF delegation failed to reach Dhaka due to a technical glitch in their aircraft.
