Shillong, July 15: The Border Guards of Bangladesh (BGB) has urged the Border Security Force (BSF) to stop smuggling of cattle.
On the concluding day of the border co-ordination meeting between Inspectors General (IG) BSF Meghalaya, Guwahati, Silchar, Tripura and Region Commander of BGB, Additional Director General BGB, Md Zahid Hasan told reporters on Saturday that cattle smuggling from India to Bangladesh has been one of the agendas.
“We have requested Indian nationals not to be involved in such smuggling. Actually smuggling of cattle is harming our economy. If it doesn’t come from India, then our dairy farmers can go up, and we can take care of ourselves. We have requested the BSF to stop smuggling and a lot of other related issues can be resolved,” Hasan said.
Issues discussed during the border conference include the presence and movement of militants along the border, transborder crimes such as supply of fake Indian currency, cattle smuggling and narcotics and resolved to work out some concrete plans so that it produced good results.
Crossing of the international border by civilians and criminals was also discussed and adopting of confidence building measures to strengthen ties at the ground level so that criminals do not take advantage of the misunderstanding or communication gap.
“We have exchanged our views, ideas and concept on border related issues in a very congenial environment with an aim to enhance existing friendly relations between the two countries by maintaining peaceful and tranquil border,” IG BSF Meghalaya frontier, P.K. Dubey said.
The BGB expressed concern over the killing of Bangladeshi nationals and smuggling of drugs, and find out the modalities to further strengthen the relationships.
“We have expressed zero tolerance for smuggling of fire arms and explosives, human trafficking and drugs. We have agreed to enhance the confidence building measures between both the forces on the ground,” Hasan said.
Both the BSF and BGB also discussed with the DGP of Meghalaya to tackle issues related to criminal activities including the presence of insurgent groups.
“We had discussed on this issue and we are very sure that there are no such places for insurgents. We discussed about sharing any kind of real time information and both the forces will promptly act if there is any,” Hasan said.
Stating that there has been full cooperation from the BGB, the BSF IG claimed that there were no insurgent camps in Bangladesh.
“If criminals hide in some of houses of somebody in the vicinity of the border, then concrete information is not available with us. So we are working for that and our intelligence agency including other sister agencies (police and others) are developing information and we will pass on to them (BGB) and take action,” Dubey said.