Four Bangladeshi infiltrators arrested near Indo-Bangla border

Kolkata, May 12 (IANS) Four Bangladeshi infiltrators were arrested by the personnel of West Bengal Police on Monday from a place near the international border of India with Bangladesh in Nadia district of West Bengal, an official said.

Later, following their questioning, the investigating officials of Nadia district police came to know that the four arrested, including two women and one man, entered the Indian side illegally almost a year back with the help of local Indian agents based out of Nadia district.

Thereafter, an insider from Nadia district police said, they shifted to different parts of the country and started earning a livelihood there through some odd jobs. However, recently, following the initiatives by the administration of different state governments to hunt illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators settled there, the four decided to come to Hanskhali in Nadia district to go back to Bangladesh after getting the first opportunity.

On Monday, the local villagers tracked them loitering around mysteriously near the international borders at Hanskhali. The villagers informed the local police, who immediately rushed to the spot and took them into custody.

Thereafter, in the face of interrogation, they admitted that they entered the Indian side through the same international borders at Hanskhali, a year back, and this time they came here with the intention of going back to Bangladesh.

Later, they were presented at a district court in Nadia district, and the court remanded them to police custody. “They will be interrogated further to track whether they had any links with the banned fundamentalist groups in Bangladesh, who had been active in different bordering districts to create sleeper cells," an official said.

Nadia had been frequently in the news for almost the last year over the arrests of illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators from there, considering that the international borders with Bangladesh in that district are extremely porous at certain points.

Nadia had also been in the news recently over busting rackets engaged in arranging fake Indian identity documents, including Indian passports for illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators.

--IANS

src/pgh