Thaindian News

Shillong, March 15 (IANS) A section of “overenthusiastic Bangladeshi border guards” are attempting to create trouble along the frontier by grabbing Indian territory, a Border Security Force (BSF) officer said here Monday.
“Normally, we have very good relations with the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR). However, some overexcited BDR officials and troopers backed by local border villagers are trying to create problems along the border with Meghalaya,” Assam-Meghalaya frontier inspector general Prithvi Raj Singh told IANS by phone.

“These motivated BDR personnel and a section of Bangladeshi border villagers have been trying to encroach Indian territory,” he added.

BDR troopers had resorted to “fresh unprovoked firing” at Muktapur village in western Meghalaya’s Jaintia Hills district Sunday and BSF troopers retaliated.

According to the BSF officer, three Indian villagers were injured in the firing.

“This was the fourth such shootout. Since Feb 4, BDR troopers have resorted to intermittent and unprovoked firing targeting Indian villagers,” Singh said.

He strongly denied Bangladeshi media reports that the BSF had dug 25 bunkers in Bangladesh territory.

Bangladeshi media, quoting BDR officials, has reported that the BSF had dug 25 bunkers in Bangladesh territory and that at least 15 Bangladeshi civilians were injured in Sunday’s skirmishes.

There was no firing on either side Monday but there is some tension along the border, the BSF officer added.

“We have strengthened all our BOPs (border outposts) and put BSF troopers on maximum alert. If the BDR indulges in a misadventure, we will give them a befitting reply,” he said.

Several rounds of inconclusive meetings between senior officers of the BSF and the BDR were held during the past few weeks to quieten the situation.

Meghalaya Chief Minister D.D. Lapang has appraised union Home Minister P. Chidambaram “of the border situiation by phone,” a Meghalaya government official told reporters.

Lapang had requested Chidambaram to take up the matter with his Bangladeshi counterpart at the earliest, the official said.

The Meghalaya chief minister, who visited Dhaka last month, had urged Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed to take steps to resolve the border problem.

“Lapang met Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka and apprised her of the situation along Meghalaya’s India-Bangladesh border arising due to BDR’s unprovoked firing,” the official said.

Meghalaya shares a 443-km border with Bangladesh, part of which is hilly and unfenced and hence prone to frequent infiltration.