Agartala: India's paramilitary forces have stepped up patrolling the porous border with Bangladesh after skirmishes flared up recently.
Bangladesh accused India last week of killing civilians along its border, as officials from the two neighbours met to try to resolve a dispute over part of their frontier.
Bangladesh Rifles border guards say most victims were innocent farmers working in their rice fields or tending cattle in Bangladesh territory along the frontier.
However, India's Border Security Force (BSF) has said those it shot were smugglers and illegal intruders trying to slip through the porous border.
"There were some exchanges of fire which we have effectively repulsed. This was on account of some disputes regarding farmlands. Some Bangladesh nationals have claimed some land on the Indian territory as their own. This we strongly refuted. The problems keep arising because of the riverine border in the region," BSF deputy inspector general, P J Sebastian, said.
BSF also accuse their Bangladesh counterparts of digging trenches and bunkers at strategic points along the border, and encouraging its nationals to cultivate on Indian territory.
Sixteen Indian and three Bangladeshi soldiers were killed in 2001 in a pitched gun battle along the border in Assam and Meghalaya.
Bangladesh and India share 4,096 km of common boarder, out of which the 6.5 km borderline between Bangladesh and Tripura is yet to be demarcated.
Comments
0 comment