Border bonhomie: India goes soft on 'non-criminal' illegals from Bangladesh

On her deathbed, Hawa Bibi, a resident of Matiyari village in West Bengal’s Nadia district, wished to meet her daughter, who lives some 2 km away. The problem was not the distance, but the barbed international border between India and Bangladesh that stood between mother and daughter.

When a villager conveyed her last wish to the company commander of the Border Security Force’s (BSF) outpost at Matiyari, he immediately got in touch with his Bangladeshi counterpart to arrange the meeting.

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The Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) stepped in to help by contacting Hawa Bibi’s daughter Maniya Bibi Mandal, who lives at Madopkhali village in Chuadanga district.  The two border guarding forces then arranged the meeting at the zero line near the international boundary within an hour of being informed about the woman’s last wish, on May 5.

Bonhomie at the border

Similarly, on May 8, the BSF and the BGB helped two Bangladeshi residents, Dalia Bibi and Omehar Bibi, to have a last glimpse of their mother Anora Halsana, who had died the previous day at Hathkhola village in West Bengal’s Nadia district.

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Deputy Inspector General (DIG) and spokesperson of the South Bengal Frontier of the BSF SS Guleria said the border force acted on grounds of “humanity and goodwill”.

However, in the light of the recent pattern of handling of the Bangladeshi trespassers or illegal migrants caught by the BSF, it seems that there is more than just “humanity and goodwill” at play on the border between the two countries.

All the trespassers caught by the BSF’s South Bengal Frontier in the past couple of months were invariably handed over to the BGB, instead of being arrested.

Four Bangladeshi nationals apprehended by the BSF from near the international border in Murshidabad district on May 8 were handed over to the BGB as a “humanitarian and goodwill” gesture. Four more, who had “inadvertently” entered Indian territory in Murshidabad district, were handed over to the BGB on May 7.

“To maintain mutual cooperation and goodwill of the border guarding forces of both the countries, they are handed over to the BGB,” a BSF communique said.

Again, on the night of May 6, a 30-year-old Bangladeshi woman was caught with her two-year-old son by the BSF while trying to cross the international border in North 24 Parganas district. They too were later handed over to the BGB.

Four Bangladeshi fishermen who had entered into Indian territory in Murshidabad district, were apprehended and handed over to the BGB by the BSF on May 2.

BSF’s new approach

There have been a series of such “humanitarian and goodwill” gestures in the past few  months that suggest that the BSF’s approach of handling the trespassers has changed. The present approach is to hand over the illegal migrants from Bangladesh to the BGB once it is verified that the trespassers were not involved in any criminal activities in India.

This is a sharp deviation from the earlier approach of sternly dealing with illegal entrants from Bangladesh that often peeved the neighbouring country.

According to the BSF’s own data, around 4,896 Bangladeshi nationals were arrested while trying to enter India from there during the period from January 1, 2019 to April 2022. But the BSF sources said more than 90 per cent of these arrests were made prior to February this year.

Bangladesh had in the past accused the BSF of being “trigger happy.”

Past ‘irritants’

A picture of 15-year-old Bangladeshi girl Felani Khatun’s lifeless body hanging from the barbed-wire border fence after being shot dead allegedly by the BSF while she was trying to cross the border that had went viral even triggered global outcry in 2011.

Even last December, Bangladesh raised strong objection to the manner in which India handled the issue of illegal migrants during the visit of Indian foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla. Dhaka raised the issue following the killing of four Bangladeshi nationals, allegedly by the BSF, in two separate incidents last November.

The approach of the BSF was an irritant in the “excellent relations” between the two countries, a Bangladeshi foreign ministry press release had quoted the country’s foreign minister AK Abdul Momen as saying to Shringla.

‘Non-use of lethal weapons’

Momen requested the Indian foreign secretary to take up the matter with all the relevant agencies in India, Bangladeshi media reported quoting the press release.

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During Shringla’s visit, India, sources said, gave this formula of handing over trespassers to the BGB provided Bangladesh readily took them back. The two countries also agreed to maintain “maximum restraint” at the border.

BSF Director-General Pankaj Kumar Singh reportedly issued a directive to his force last month to abide by the non-use of lethal weapon strategy on the border with Bangladesh unless there is risk to life.