Illegal crossings into Bangladesh rising

Incidents of illegal crossing into Bangladesh from India have been on increase in recent months.

As of Sunday, this November saw the highest number of illegal crossings of the international border into Bangladesh from India since July with 320 people entering into the country without any travel document.

Foreign minister AK Abdul Momen, however, on Sunday evening said to New Age: ‘We have not been formally informed about it [illegal crossings into Bangladesh], rather we saw only  media reports. We will see to it if we are officially told.’

The foreign minister earlier on the day in Sylhet said that India’s National Register of Citizens was their internal issue and it would not have any impact on Bangladesh.

‘The Indian government repeatedly assured us that the preparation of the NRC is their internal issue. They would not push any Bengali people into Bangladesh,’ he told reporters after addressing an event in the divisional headquarters.

He said that a group of ‘middlemen’ was active around the issue of Indian NRC.

The minister claimed that these unscrupulous people were trying to convince Indian people that there were better livelihood opportunities available for them in Bangladesh if they cross the border, reported the New Age Sylhet correspondent.

‘…But, we never let such people enter our country,’ Momen added.

A BGB press release issued on November 1 said that they held 13 Indians and five Nigerians in October and legal actions were underway.

In September, the BGB stated that they held three Nigerians along the border in August on similar charges in July.

BGB officials said locals living in frontier areas said hundreds of Indian people, especially Muslims, gathered inside Indian territory near Bangladesh frontiers being panicked by a reported move to prepare a National Register of Citizens in West Bengal following the controversial NRC was implemented in Assam.

On Sunday, Benapole police station officer-in-charge Mamun Khan said in Jashore that they detained 32 people coming from Bengaluru, Mumbai and Kolkata when they had crossed the international border into WHERE?.

‘We had no scope to verify their nationality so we sent them to the court for a decision,’ said Mamun.

Border Guard Bangladesh Kushtia sector headquarters officials said on Friday that they detained 234 persons – men, women and children – along the Moheshpur border in Jhenaidah for trespass in the first three weeks of November whereas the number was around 10 to 12 in October.

Of the 234 detainees, 20 people in two groups along with a human trafficker were held while trying to illegally cross the Palianpur and Jujuli borders into Moheshpur on Saturday, BGB 58 battalion commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Kamrul Ahsan said.

‘We have handed them over to the local police station for legal action as none of them had legal travel documents,’ said Kamrul.

BGB officials said that all the 20 trespassers held on Saturday were Muslims and used to work in Bengaluru.  

‘It’s not sure how many others have entered dodging border guards,’ said another BGB official, adding, ‘We are in a dilemma as to how we should handle them… But they all are Muslim by religion’.

The BGB field official said, ‘Many of the women worked in Indian brothels and we could not examine whether they were HIV-positive…we detained and handed them over to the local police station on charge of trespass.’

‘We are in a dilemma on how we will handle them since they neither possess any passport nor could they name their identifiers in any country. But, they all are Muslim by religion,’ he added.

Moheshur police station officer-in-charge Rashedul Islam said on Saturday that about 17 cases were filed with his police station accusing 204 people, held by the BGB between November 1 and 23, and none of them had passport with them.

‘We sent them to court,’ said Rashedul.

The detained people were mostly from Mumbai and Bengaluru and belonged to low income groups, police and BGB officials said.      

‘We are monitoring our border as we are entrusted to, and handing over anyone who tried to trespass as we regularly do…no special instruction has been taken so far,’ said a senior BGB official in Dhaka.

Neither the BGB director general nor the South-Western regional commander was available for comments despite multiple attempts until Saturday evening. 

Jamiat ul Ulema-e-Islam Bangladesh secretary-general Nur Hossain Kasemi in a statement on Sunday expressed his deep concerns over the continued trespassing on the Bangladesh territory from India.

He said that trespassing into Bangladesh was not mere an incident of conspiracy and extremely inhuman, rather it was violation of international laws and caused threat to the sovereignty of Bangladesh.

‘It is in no way good news for the country as frightened people are entering Bangladesh because of the NRC in India,’ he said, adding that measures should be taken to strengthen the border monitoring. We don’t want to face another Rohingya-like situation’.

Indian rights organisation Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha in a statement on Saturday condemned the incident of deporting 60 labourers working in the outskirts of Bengaluru of Karnataka into Bangladesh that day without maintaining proper legal procedure.

Kirity Roy, the secretary of another Indian rights body MASUM, raised questions on how the accused were identified as Bangladeshi nationals and if the Bangladeshi government was intimated about the repatriation.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee recently said she would not allow implementing NRC in West Bengal. Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina held a meeting with Mamata on Friday.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net