Guwahati, Nov 30: Pakistan intelligence agency ISI is helping various militant outfits in Bangladesh to carry out subversive activities in India through members of al Qaida and Taliban, Border Security Force (BSF) sources said. Addressing mediapersons have on the occasion of its forthcoming raising day, Additional DIG (Frontier Headquarters) M L Wasan said the BSF had enough inputs to prove the same.
Wasan said during a BSF-BDR meeting held at Shillong on October last the BSF handed over a fresh list of 78 insurgent camps in Bangladesh to the BDR delegation led by Brigadier General Md. Ibrahim Khalil and urged them to take proper action against the Indian insurgents.
He said efforts were on to complete the fencing along the Indo-Bangladesh border. During the current year out of the sanctioned 473,539 km stretch of international border under the frontier, 256913 km had been fenced and work was in progress in 1993 km.
However, Wasan said there had been problems in erecting fence along the riverine border as in some stretches, fencing had been washed away due to soil erosion on the banks of water channels. In the creek areas also border fence remained submerged under water during most part of the year which made it ineffective and susceptible to rust and damage.
He informed that in the Shillong Frontier sector during last one year a total of 414 illegal Bangladesh entrants were intercepted as they trespassed to Indian territory for committing various border crimes. ''Interrogation of many of the arrested Bangladeshi nationals reveal that they have intentions to settle in India, seek job on Indian side and smuggle Indian goods for their Bangladeshi smuggling syndicates.''
Wasan said infiltration through Indo-Bangla border at Dhubri in Assam was more than the Indo-Bangla border in Meghalaya because of ethnic similarity between people of Bangladesh and Dhubri.
To curb the Bangladeshi infiltration through these borders and contain trans-border smuggling, the BSF had already suggested to the respective state governments for issuing identity cards to the people living in border areas and also to the boatmen, who move through the riverine border between the two countries, he added.
Bureau Report