Trans-border crimes

The four-day talks between India and Bangladesh at the Directors-General-level which ended in Dhaka on Saturday has brought to the fore certain very important issues particularly in relation to Assam and the North-eastern region. The two neighbours share a common border running into 4,096-kilometre, which is the fifth-longest international land border in the world. Of this, while West Bengal has the highest share (2,217 km), the shares of other states are as follows – Tripura (856 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Mizoram (318 km) and Assam (262 km). While infiltration has remained a decades-old problem that has led to serious and irreversible demographic changes in Assam, West Bengal and Tripura, trans-border crimes have also led to a lot of misgivings between the two countries. That exactly is why the Border Security Force (BSF) and Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) in the four-day talks agreed to share real time information with each other expeditiously through formal/informal channels regarding various trans-border crimes. The list of trans-border crimes is pretty long: ranging from smuggling of drugs and narcotics to human trafficking, FICN, cattle, arms, ammunition, explosives, breaching and damaging of the border fence, movement and activities of Indian insurgent groups and so on. Though Bangladesh has been habitually complaining of death and apprehension of criminals from that country in the hands of the BSF, the latter has however made it clear that such deaths and apprehensions have occurred irrespective of nationality of the criminals. The fact remains that the criminals operate in a concerted manner from both sides of the border, and these gangs are so well-organised that they often collect large number of miscreants armed with dao and sticks and surround the BSF personnel whenever attempts are made to apprehend them. This trend has been increasing particularly in Assam, Tripura and West Bengal, where the population on either side of the border has become the same, thanks to large-scale infiltration from the other side.