Author: Jayanta Gupta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 5, 2008
URL: http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Kolkata_/BSF_worried_over_border_exodus/articleshow/3794525.cms
Border Security Force officials said that
there had been an exodus across the 1,145 km porous Indo-Bangla border ever
since the terror attack on November 26.
"Hundreds of people are crossing over
to Bangladesh. Most of them may be illegal migrants working as labourers in
Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata. While all attention was on Mumbai and the western
frontier, no additional resources were deployed in the east. We did our best
to nab as many as we could but many more could have got away through the extremely
porous border," a senior officer said.
Only about 550 km of the border with Bangaldesh
in Bengal has been fenced. Of the remaining, nearly 267 km is a natural riverine
boundary.
The exfiltration', as officers refer to it,
has raised fears that some terrorists may also have sneaked out of the country
over the past week. "The Bangladeshi nationals we have nabbed have been
handed over to civil police. They have to interrogate them and get more details,"
the officer added. The civil police, even if it has received any information,
is not ready to share it.
After much ado, BSF battalions on the east
have been issued thermal imagers to spot movement in the dark. This equipment
was issued to their counterparts in the west years ago. In the years that
it took for the imagers to reach this sector, the country has witnessed numerous
terror strikes and every time a link has been found to the Indo-Bangla border.
In the last couple of years, at least 13 people
with jihadi links have been picked up by the BSF along this border. Officers
say that the imagers alone are not sufficient. There is an acute shortage
of manpower and villagers continue to remain hostile.
Officers contend that the only option is complete
domination of the area within 150 yards of the international border, particularly
at sensitive spots.
