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The Milli Gazette Online

Rangpur: Border Security Force (BSF) of India killed 200 innocent Bangladeshis and injured over 125 others along the 4,156 kilometre-long common Indo-Bangladesh border during the last four years since the Boraibari skirmishes in April, 2001. BSF troops also opened fire along the border more than 150 times without any provocation creating very tense situations during the period.

Jawans of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) thwarted at least 215 push-in bids by the Indian border guards along the northern, western and southern frontiers during the same period, official sources said. 

The sources said the BSF troops and the Indian miscreants killed 65 innocent Bangladeshis and injured 47 others in 2001, 73 and 31 in 2002, 32 and 16 in 2003, and 30 and 31 in 2004 along the common border.

They also abducted 147 Bangladeshis after intruding into the Bangladesh territory illegally. Most of the killings and the abductions took place along Satkhira, Jessore, Chuadanga, Meherpur, Kushtia, Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Naogaon, Joypurhat, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon, Panchagarh, Lalmonirhat and Kurigram borders during the period.

The BSF troops and the Indian miscreants tortured innocent people and looted goods from enclaves and other areas of the Bangladesh territory.

The victims, who were shot dead, were mostly farmers, fishermen, day-labourers, students, youths and cowboys.

The Indian guards took away all the bodies inside their country and returned those in mutilated forms following flag meetings only at night after two to four days. The BDR side lodged strong protests in all the cases with the BSF and demanded compensations. The BSF always regretted the killings and assured the BDR of not repeating the same. But they repeated the same breaking their commitments, the sources said.

On the other hand, the Bangladesh border guards never opened a single round of fire on any Indian civilian or killed anyone. According to government officials, the BSF troops have been killing the innocent Bangladeshis like birds and animals without any provocation violating human rights and all agreed international norms and rules. No BSF man has so far been punished by their authorities for such illegal killings, they added. 

Besides, BDR officials termed such actions by the BSF troops as a gross violation of the international rules and human rights. "It is an unprecedented action in the world history that a force has been killing innocent citizens of any bordering country."

The Bangladesh border guards never killed anyone, instead they only arrested Indian nationals if they violated the border rules. The guards returned most of them to India without harming any of them. Even the BDR jawans returned a number of BSF troops who illegally intruded into Bangladesh with arms, the BDR officials said.

According to the officials, when the BSF troops opened gunfire, the BDR jawans showed maximum restraints to check further escalation of the situation. They retaliated the BSF gunfire only on a few occasions for their self-defence.

The government officials and other sources said the Indian border guards assembled several thousand Bangla-speaking Indian Muslims, including women and children, on 215 occasions along the common border from Kurigram to Satkhira since 2002 for pushing them into the Bangladesh territory at gun-point. The BDR jawans thwarted such push-in bids.

Bordering sources said many of the female push-in victims aged between 12 years and 35 were violated. The Indian troops and the hooligans tortured the enclavemen and collected illegal toll from them. They also frequently besieged the over five lakh Bangladeshi enclavemen living inside Indian mainland.
Besides, the BSF troops resisted construction of roads, embankments and revetments inside Bangladesh along the border during the period. 

While talking to BSF recently, the BDR officials said there is ample scope for strengthening the existing Indo-Bangladesh relations if the Indian side stopped such killings, abductions, gunfire and push-in bids besides solving the longstanding enclave problems through implementing the 1974 Indira-Mujib Accord.

The officials said, "We are always sincerely trying to solve the issues but the opposite side is doing something else which sometimes disturbs peace along the border." (nation.ittefaq.com) «