The Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) has deployed armed volunteers to defend villages at more than a dozen points across the international border in West Bengal and Tripura, the move comes amid an escalating crackdown on illegal immigrants from the neighboring country and a policy of turning away people suspected of having questionable nationality, Bangladesh Border Guard personnel on the ground said on Wednesday.
Over the past week, Border Security Force (BSF) personnel at various locations in West Bengal and Tripura have reported multiple sightings of Bangladeshi villagers assisting BSF personnel on their side of the border and monitoring fencing work initiated in nine different districts of West Bengal.
Border Security Force personnel reported the sightings primarily in Bangladesh’s border districts of Chapinawabganj, Thakurgaon and Dinajpur, which share borders with West Bengal state, said mid-level officials of the Border Security Force aware of the matter.
Bangladesh Border Guard Forces officials confirmed that in more than a dozen locations across the above-mentioned districts in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Home Ministry has also deployed personnel from Ansar Bangladesh and the Village Defense Party – the country’s paramilitary force to help prevent people from fleeing to Bangladesh.
Border Guard personnel on the ground informed their superiors of seeing these armed village volunteers and paramilitary personnel in the border village in Bangladesh.
“Local villagers in both West Bengal and Tripura, along with BSF personnel on the ground, spotted armed villagers volunteering as volunteers for the BSF. Villagers on our side of the border were told by Bangladeshi nationals across the border that training was conducted by the BSF before they were deployed. This is due to the crackdown on infiltrators, which also resulted in hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals voluntarily trying to flee to Bangladesh. Villagers guard the border. “They work around the clock in different shifts and ensure that even their own citizens do not re-enter their country illegally,” said a Border Guard officer, who asked to remain anonymous.
There was no response from the Border Security Forces headquarters in Delhi regarding the situation on the ground. India shares a 4,096.70 km border with Bangladesh, with West Bengal sharing its longest border at 2,216.7 km. The two forces have checkpoints on their sides of the border. India has at least 1,185 border outposts along the border. Every year, Border Patrol forces arrest between 1,500 and 2,000 illegal immigrants who enter the fence by bribing traders and exploiting land where there is no fence.
It is certainly not against the rules for border guards to train and arm villagers on their side of the border, but this is an aggressive stance given the situation along the India-Bangladesh border.
But in recent years, controversy over the issue of Bangladesh borders and illegal immigrants has escalated, especially in the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal and Assam. The Union government has formed a committee to probe the demographics even as senior ministers claim that Bangladeshi migrants are entering India illegally.
On June 7, West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that the new state government had returned nearly 4,800 illegal immigrants from the state and 836 of them had been detained in temporary detention centres. He also granted land to the Border Guard Forces to fence the border across nearly 100 kilometres.
Over the past two weeks, BSF personnel and BSF personnel have been locked in stand-offs at various places over the return of infiltrators detected by BSF near the border at more than half a dozen different places, including the latest one at the Mahendraganj border in Meghalaya.
The two forces held flag meetings at company commander level at several places to resolve the issue of BGB’s refusal to accept infiltrators. In New Jalpaiguri, some Bangladeshi nationals had to be returned to the New Jalpaiguri detention center because they were initially stopped by villagers, and the Bangladeshi border guards did not recognize them as their own citizens
Commanders of the Frontier Corps and Frontier Corps held their scheduled bi-annual conference in New Delhi, which began on Monday.
Ahead of the talks, the Bangladeshi Border Guard and Home Ministry told Bangladeshi media in a statement on Sunday that “illegal payment” to infiltrators and border-related issues would be part of the discussion.
“In these recent cases, it was the village defense volunteers who objected to the intruders (Bangladeshi citizens) entering their country. Since their side of the border has no fence, they help the border guards in ensuring that their citizens do not return illegally. Maybe they also don’t want to take any risks and don’t want to take anyone claiming to be their citizen,” the officer quoted above added.
