E-Paper
National security being ignored at Indo-Bangla border in Karimganj: BSF DIG
His reaction came after a motorcycle-borne biker from Bangladesh on Thursday allegedly crossed the international border on his bike and entered Assam’s Karimganj district
The Landport Authority of India (LPAI) is focusing on trade more and ignoring the other sides, which may cause harm to national security, said Dr CP Meena, deputy inspector general of police (DIG), Border Security Force (BSF), Mizoram Cachar Frontier, Silchar Sector.
His reaction came after a motorcycle-borne biker from Bangladesh on Thursday allegedly crossed the international border on his bike and entered Assam’s Karimganj district. DIG Meena visited the India-Bangladesh international border on Thursday to review the ground situation.
“The CCTV cameras are not working properly, the barricades are not placed in order and the condition of the road is pathetic. There are other issues as well which may harm the national security in the long run, if not take proper care of it,” he said following his inspection visit.
A motorcyclist from Bangladesh had allegedly crossed the border on his bike and reached Assam’s Karimganj district, prompting a search operation by the police. Following the incident, a meeting between the BSF and Border Guard of Bangladesh (BGP) commandant-level flag meeting was held on Thursday.
Meena met some officials of BSF and BGP in which he said that this is the first of its kind incident reported here and they are trying to find out the weak points.
“Many important issues were discussed in the meeting and some steps will be taken after this. This kind of incident never happened here in the past. We’ll make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” DIG Meena said after the meeting.
According to the officials familiar with the matter, only 21 out of 47 CCTV cameras in the Sutarkandi Land Port area are working while other infrastructures are also weak.
The Karimganj police said that the biker rode around 30 kilometres inside the Indian territory before hiding somewhere in Karimganj’s Madan Mohan area. He left his bike in the middle of a road which was later recovered by the police during a search operation.
Superintendent of police (SP), Karimganj district, Partha Pratim Das told HT that for some activities, the BSF opened the gates of the international border on Wednesday evening and the biker took that opportunity to enter.
“It happened in the evening and for some reason, he was not shot down by the forces. BSF informed us about it and we immediately launched a search operation,” Das said.
A special team of police with bomb defusing squad recovered the bike with a registration number belonging to Bangladesh’s Sylhet district. After recovery, the SP said that the details of the bike have been sent to BSF and they’ll communicate with their counterparts in Bangladesh.
“No explosives or any kind of weapons were found with the bike. We are trying to figure out the motive of the Bangladeshi biker,” Das had said.
