Author: Rabi Banerjee
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: February 11, 2003
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030211/asp/bengal/story_1659574.asp
Police and the Border Security Force
here have unearthed a blueprint drawn up by the Bangladesh Rifles to "allow"
Bangladeshis who had been "pushed back" into their territory to infiltrate
India again.
According to intelligence reports,
the Bangladesh police had arrested most of the 56 men, women and children
rounded up by the police in Delhi and sent to the Phulbari border near
Karimpur in Nadia on January 30 and "pushed back" by the BSF into Bangladesh
the next day.
Before this operation, the BDR had
strongly resisted the pushback and had beaten up several members of the
group, which was then forced to camp at Phulbari. A similar fate had befallen
the 213 Bangladeshi snake-charmers who were stranded in Cooch Behar's Satgachhi
last week, leading to a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Today's breakthrough comes close
on the heels of Saturday's attempt by the BDR to push in about 500 Bangladeshis
through the border at Sitalkuchi in Cooch Behar.
Another possible standoff between
the border guards was averted after a commandant- level meeting on the
same day.
According to the intelligence reports
here, the Bangladesh police have rounded up most of the group sent back
and subsequently handed them over to the BDR at the Kazipur camp of the
ninth battalion.
A BSF officer quoted a BDR company
commander as saying at a flag meeting on February 5: "We are under tremendous
pressure from our own government to disown these people."
The BDR now wants these groups to
"infiltrate" India and is wary of pushing them back themselves, the BSF
officer said.
After the flag meeting, the BSF
took strong exception to the BDR digging trenches along the border at Kazipur,
where one of the groups had been brought.
"I have seen many of those who returned
to Bangladesh huddling there in groups," said Abdul Ghani, one of the youths
who had escorted a group back into Bangladesh on January 31.
But BSF sources said the BDR has
put on hold its ploy to send the groups back into India after getting to
know about its heightened vigil along the Nadia border.
"The BDR is aware that we are equipped
with night vision glasses and have more outposts. They know that their
attempts to send in their people would be met with stiff resistance," a
BSF officer said.
The villagers here have their fingers
crossed about a possible border flare-up if the BDR-backed "infiltration"
commenced.
