Tension simmering between BSF, BDR

Tension between the Border Security Force and the Bangladesh Rifles in the Tripura sector of the India-Bangladesh border is simmering.

Bangladesh Rifles has strengthened its position along the border with fresh reinforcements, despite warning from India, in a bid to subvert the ongoing construction of barbed wire fencing by India.

Fresh tension is also brewing in Kamalpur subdivision of Dhalai district where Bangladesh is constructing an embankment along Dhalai river in violation of bilateral agreements on water resource management.

A formal press note issued by the state BSF sector headquarter in Agartala said the BDR has sent reinforcements to outposts at Kurma and Mokabil of Maulvi Bazar district of Bangladesh to provide security to the illegal construction.

These incidents come a week after an assistant commandant of BSF - Jeevan Kumar - was allegedly abducted, tortured and killed by the BDR troops near the Lankamura border check post.

• 'You can't kill an uniformed officer like this'

In Shillong, the BSF said, the Bangladesh army in `BDR uniform' is patrolling the border, located on the other side of the Dhubri area.

"The BDR is deploying extra force in the Dhubri sector. And actually the army, clad in BDR uniform, is patrolling the border," an official from BSF's Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland frontier, which is headquartered in Shillong, said.

But there has been no report of any untoward incident either in the Dhubri sector or any other part of the 557-km Bangladesh border in Assam and Meghalaya that the AMMN frontier guards.

Meanwhile, the BSF has asked the air force to investigate an alleged violation of Indian airspace by a Bangladesh Rifles helicopter in Tripura, according to reports from New Delhi.

• India mute on Jeevan Kumar's slaughter

The BSF claimed its personnel had seen a BDR helicopter flying over Chotakhil in Sabroom subdivision of Tripura and also in Magrum and Beltoli areas along the international border on Friday.

"The helicopter was seen a few hundred metres inside Indian airspace and we have passed on this information to the Indian Air Force for investigation," BSF Director General R S Mooshahary said in New Delhi on Sunday.

He said BDR troops had also dug trenches and intensified patrolling on their side along the Tripura border.

Dismissing as 'baseless and fabricated' the allegations made by the BDR (7th battalion) Commanding Officer Syed Quamru Zaman that an Indian helicopter had violated Bangladeshi airspace, the BSF said the timing coincided with the flight of an aircraft from Agartala to Kolkata.

• Bangladesh Rifles lacks discipline: BSF

The statement said the BDR commandant had been asked to exercise restraint from making allegations and 'misguiding border population on both sides'.

The statement said the BDR was resorting to disinformation campaign to conceal its acts of omission and commission along the border as well as to divert the people's attention from the 'gory and pre-planned killing' of Jeevan Kumar on April 16.