BSF face Bengal fire

Usually hauled up for mercilessly shooting down Bangladeshis on the border, India’s Border Security Force (BSF) has now been pulled up for ‘encouraging’ trafficking from Bangladesh into West Bengal.

The West Bengal state police chief Naparajit Mukherji has presented the findings of SPs from the border districts to the state government, in which he has blamed the BSF for abetting trafficking of illegal migrants, weapons and drugs along the state’s eastern border with Bangladesh.

Indo-Bangla border

Mukherji did not want to comment because the report is marked ‘secret’ but a West Bengal home department official said on condition of anonymity that police chief’s report contains “specific details” of BSF units abetting illegal movement of people across the border.

“The worst situation is reported from Murshidabad along Bangladesh’s Rajshahi region. A long stretch of the border there is becoming a haven of traffickers and smugglers and they receive cooperation from some elements of the BSF,” the report has pointed out.

BSF’s additional director-general (east) B.D Sharma admitted that they have received allegations from the West Bengal government about some units of the force.

‘We are seriously investigating the allegations. If any of our personnel are found guilty, they will be punished,” he said, but did not provide details of the allegations.

But some BSF officials say that whenever the force gets tough in border districts with criminal elements, they face stiff criticism from local politicians and police.

Police chief Mukherji’s report particularly pulls up two BSF battalions - 130th and 151st – both of which are based in Murshidabad district and cover it along with parts of two adjoining districts.

“It cites interrogation reports of several Bangladesh nationals arrested for illegal entry into Indian territory who have said they have crossed over on the basis ofunderstanding with the BSF. It also refers to links between some BSF personnel and a notorious human trafficker of Rajshahi, Mohammed Saidul Islam,” said the Home department official.

Apart from illegal migrants, the Rajshahi corridor is also becoming a preferred route for those smuggling in weapons and drugs going either way , both in and out of Bangladesh, the report said.

Tension between BSF units deployed in West Bengal and the state government is not a new phenomenon but very rarely has a state police chief pulled up the border guard force in the way Mukherji has.

Naparajit Mukherji is Indian Police Service officer of West Bengal cadre who has spent some time in India’s federal Intelligence Bureau. Before his elevation as the state police chief during the last days of the Left Front rule, he was heading Bengal police intelligence that was hailed for the success against the Maoists.

Most senior Maoist leaders operating in West Bengal have been neutralized, killed or arrested. That includes the dreaded chief of the Maoist military commission, Koteswar Rao alias Kishenji, who was killed in an encounter.