STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: Smugglers are active again along the Indo-Bangla border in Assam and West Bengal sectors.
The border trade between the two neighbouring countries resumed on October 20, 2021, after over six months due to the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Taking the advantage of the porous border, a gang of mafias has been active in the smuggling of goods, especially cattle and banned drugs from India to Bangladesh dodging the BSF.
Based on intelligence inputs, BSF troopers killed three persons, including two suspected Bangladeshi nationals at Sitaialong along the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal's Cooch Behar district on Friday in an operation to prevent cattle smuggling. One of the deceased is an Indian national, Prakash Barman (35), son of Anil Barman of Samta in Cooch Behar.
The smuggling on the India-Bangladesh border is rampant though the BSF has been effective in checking it to a large extent. The never-ending demand from Bangladesh keeps fuelling the illegal trade.
Bangladesh and India share a 4,096-km border. Of this, 2,217 km is in West Bengal, 262 km in Assam, 856 km in Tripura, 180 km in Mizoram, and 443 km is in Meghalaya.
In Assam, the Mankachar region on the Assam-Meghalaya-Bangladesh, and another part of the Dhubri district are hubs of the cattle trade, sources said.
According to BSF intelligence, smugglers from Bangladesh venture into Indian territory and try to smuggle cattle by establishing an improvised bamboo cantilever at two places. The seizure records show that smugglers are now focusing on Yabba tablets since these are easy to smuggle and hard to trace.
Along with Yaba tablets, the smugglers' gang has been pushing cattle, banned drugs, ganja, phensedyl, core tablets through the porous border, sources said.
The BSF is now looking for three persons- Krishna Roy, Narayan Roy and Eti Roy – who are running such illegal activities through the border.
All these three persons have past criminal records.
The gang is allegedly run at the behest of a senior police official of the Dhubri district along with an employee of the Customs Department.
"We are helpless in such a situation because the area falls under the state police. It does not fall under our operational area," said a senior BSF official.
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