BSF hands over woman along Banglabandha border
Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) detained nine people, including children, last night and early today after they were pushed into Bangladesh allegedly by India's Border Security Force through Panchagargh's Tetulia and Sadar upazilas.
BGB officials handed over four detainees to Tetulia police, while a UP chairman handed over five women to Panchagarh Sadar police, according to officials of both police stations.
In Sadar upazila, locals, including a UP chairman, detained five women at a market in Dhangipukur village of Sadar upazila around 1:00am after they had illegally crossed into Bangladesh, said Inspector (Investigation) Ashish Kumar Shil of Panchagarh Sadar Police Station.
The market is located 2km from the Ghagra border near Pillar No 756.
Later in the day, UP chairman Nur Alam Siddiqui handed them over to Panchagarh Sadar police, he said.
OC Ashish said during primary interrogation, the detainees claimed to be Bangladeshi nationals from Jashore and Mymensingh districts who had earlier gone to India illegally in search of work and had been living in different parts of the country for years.
Recently, Indian police detained them from several places, including Mumbai, and handed them over to the BSF, who later pushed them into Bangladesh, said police.
In Tetulia, BGB members of the Banglabandha Border Outpost detained a woman and her three children near border Pillar No 732/4-S around 8:30pm last night after they had illegally crossed into Bangladesh, said Tetulia Police Station OC Md Musa Miah.
Later, the BGB men handed them over to Tetuila police on early Friday.
Police officials from the two stations said they were verifying the identities of the detainees before handing them over to their families.
In another incident, the Border Security Force (BSF) handed over a Bangladeshi woman to the BGB at the zero line last night after a flag meeting between company commander-level officials of the two border forces along the Banglabandha border, said Md Monirul Islam, commanding officer of the BGB 18 Battalion in Panchagarh.
BSF detained the woman on the Indian side of the border on Wednesday night near Pillar No 731/16 while she was trying to cross over into Bangladesh from India.
A resident of Dinajpur district, the woman and her husband went to India last year where she had been working at a temple in Siliguri, West Bengal, while her husband was working at a shop, said the BGB CO.
The two were trying to return home on Wednesday night. When a floodlight was turned on, the man rushed into the deep cover of a nearby forest, but the woman was caught, he added.
