A day after two Bangladeshi women were arrested at the Agartala railway station moments before boarding a train to Kolkata, a joint operation of the Government Railway Police (GRP), Railway Police Force (RPF) and Border Security Force (BSF) Saturday arrested three more Bangladeshi nationals, including two men and a woman.
Speaking to reporters Sunday morning, Agartala GRP station in-charge Tapas Das said, “We conducted a joint operation with sister agencies and arrested three Bangladeshi nationals from Agartala railway station yesterday. They had entered the Indian territory by illegally crossing the border. They confessed during interrogation that they had plans to reach Kolkata from the Agartala railway station and from there further to Bangalore and Chennai. We have registered a case at Agartala GRP station against them under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), Indian Passport Act, Foreigners Act and other relevant sections of the law”.
The official also said that the authorities are trying to identify if others were involved with them when crossing the border. The arrested were produced before a local court. Three smartphones, Indian currency notes and Bangladeshi voter ID cards were recovered from their possession.
The arrestees were identified as Kamrunnnesa from Dhaka, 23; Md Islamil Hossein, 22; and Md Nur Hossein from Chittagong, 25. The woman said during interrogation that she was assured of landing a job at a beauty parlour in Bangalore by a Bangladeshi human trafficker, while the other two said they were promised jobs at juice bars in Chennai.
Earlier, on April 18, two Bangladeshi women were arrested in a similar operation at the Agartala railway station.
During preliminary interrogation, they confessed to having come from Bangladesh and that they were jailed from Barishal and Manikganj districts of Bangladesh, respectively and that they were about to board a train from Agartala for Kolkata and further go to Mumbai from there.
A series of infiltrations of Bangladeshi and Rohingya nationals was thwarted, and several foreign nationals were arrested recently, especially since August last year when the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government fell in Bangladesh amidst protests.
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Vigil along the international border was tightened following assurances from the central government that the nation’s borders are well protected and no illegal immigration would be allowed in the wake of violence in Bangladesh, especially in the context of recent turbulence in the neighbouring country.
The then BSF Tripura frontier Inspector General Patel Piyush Purushottam Das visited the riverine border with gaps in fencing and took stock of the steps from field commanders to ensure security in those areas and stressed using non-lethal weapons to prevent the trans-border smuggling and sensitized them about the current situation.
In the first week of March this year, BSF troops successfully thwarted several smuggling attempts and seized a huge quantity of narcotics, cattle, rice, and other contraband items worth Rs 2.88 crore and ganja 280.67 kg has also been seized.
A series of 61 simultaneous operations and coordinated patrols were also organized in multiple border coordination meetings with BGB at various levels to prevent smuggling and other crimes along the border.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd