Border tense as Bangladesh guards stop India from building fence

Personnel of the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) stopped Border Security Force (BSF) officers from building a cattle fence near the India-Bangladesh border in Coochbehar, north Bengal on Thursday evening, further straining relations between the two countries amidst the political turmoil in Dhaka.

There was no violence, said people familiar with the matter, but the construction has now been put on hold and will be brought up during a meeting of the director generals of the two forces in Delhi this October.

“While our personnel were supervising the construction of the cattle fence, BGB personnel came over and objected. It was not even a border fence,” said a top BSF official aware of the issue.

“The fence was being built to ensure that cattle from one country don’t stray into another, which often causes disputes between village residents on either side,” added the official, who asked not to be named.

Another official said on condition of anonymity that the cattle fence was being built as per a 2012 agreement between the two countries.

GB and BSF battalion commandants held a flag meeting at the border to sort out the issue amicably, but could not arrive at a solution.

“The matter will be brought up during a meeting of the director generals’ of the two forces, scheduled to be held in Delhi in the first week of October. On both sides of the border, there is no violence, but patrolling by both forces has been increased,” said the second official.

The chiefs of the two border-guarding forces meet twice a year to discuss issues along the 4,096.7km Indo-Bangladesh border. The last meeting was held in Bangladesh on March 5 this year. To be sure, BGB is still to confirm the date of the upcoming meeting.

This is the second time in a week that tensions have spiked at the frontier, which has been on the edge since Bangladesh’s Awami League government collapsed on August 5 amid chaos and violence. Then prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled Dhaka as the bloody protests against her administration ratcheted up, forcing her to resign. Since then, an interim government led by Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus has taken charge.

However, several people, especially supporters or members of Hasina’s Awami League, have tried to make their way into India, forcing BSF to up their guard and keep illegal immigrants at bay.

On Saturday, BGB refused to return five Indian nationals who accidentally strayed into Bangladesh territorial waters. The five men were helping BSF personnel rescue smuggled animals in the Ganga on Saturday, when their speed boat developed a snag and the currents swept them towards Bangladesh. Despite several flag meetings at various levels, BGB has refused to return them and they were instead jailed in a Bangladesh prison. They are still in prison.

BSF headquarters in Delhi has maintained in different press statements that BGB has responded well on matters concerning illegal infiltration and protection of minorities, but people on the ground in the eastern frontier have said BGB’s stance on a range of issues has changed since the government fell.

Since Hasina’s ouster, the BSF in its statements has maintained that the BGB personnel have been taking steps to protect Indian nationals and those from minority communities in Bangladesh. But many mid-level officials in BSF that HT spoke to are apprehensive that the regime change could lead to changes in the BGB too and recalled that the relationship between the two forces was not amicable in the years when Hasina was not in power during the early 2000s.