E-Paper
BSF rescues Bangladeshi girl who crossed border to escape father’s thrashing
The girl travelled around 3 kms on foot and crossed the India-Bangladesh border to enter West Bengal through an unfenced patch. She has said that she doesn’t want to return home as her father would beat her again.
KOLKATA: A 15-year-old Bangladeshi girl crossed the Indo-Bangla international border and landed in West Bengal on Thursday afternoon to escape the thrashing of her father, Border Security Force (BSF) officials said.
The BSF personnel rescued the girl and handed her over to the local police and alerted the child welfare committee. She was later handed over to Childline India Foundation, an NGO working on child trafficking and child abuse cases with the help of the child welfare committee.
“She left her home in Bangladesh out of fear of her father. She said that her father thrashes her regularly for no reason. She even said that she doesn’t want to return home as her father would beat her again,” said SS Guleria, DIG BSF (South Bengal Frontier).
The girl is a resident of Jhenaidah, a Bangladesh district which shares its border with North 24 Parganas and Nadia in West Bengal. Her village Bansberia is around 3 kms away from the international border.
BSF officials said that she travelled around 3 kms on foot and crossed the border to enter West Bengal through an unfenced patch. It was then that the BSF personnel spotted her and she was rescued on Thursday evening.
“She had no luggage and was not carrying any money. She just fled from home out of fear of her father. We wanted to send her back but she was so traumatised that she refused to go back. It was then that we alerted the government’s child welfare committee. The Border Guard Bangladesh has also been informed,” said Guleria.
In another incident, a 11-year-old boy was used by his father to smuggle gold biscuits to India from Bangladesh through the Indo-Bangladesh border in south Bengal.
While BSF seized the gold biscuits weighing more than a kilo and worth ₹65 lakh from the child, his father managed to escape.
BSF said that the man and his child, residents of North 24 Parganas, crossed the international border for fishing. BSF intercepted the child when he came back to India and found the biscuits. The man has been identified as Asiful Mondol.
The Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal is the longest and one of the most porous international borders in any state across the country. Out of the 4,096.7 km long Indo-Bangla border, West Bengal alone shares 2,216 km with the neighbouring country. In south Bengal, the border is more than 900 km long out of which nearly 60% is riverine.
Data placed by the union ministry of home affairs before parliament in March 2020 shows that security agencies arrested 1,175, 1,118 and 1,351 people in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively, along the entire stretch of the Indo-Bangla border in India. Human trafficking, smuggling of drugs, cattle and wildlife are common along the Indo-B Bangla border.
