It is really depressing to know that a person of such a high position as Director General (DG) of India’s Border Security Force, Pankaj Kumar Singh, could make such an irresponsible remark that all Bangladeshis killed on the border were ‘criminals’. His (Pankaj) comment in Dhaka is not only offensive but very dangerous as well. When these criminals overpower BSF officers, lethal weapons are used to stop them, he had said this, at a joint press conference at Pilkhana headquarters of BGB in Dhaka, a national daily mentioned on Friday.
What a blatant lie it is to hide the BSF’s criminal act on the border that is being committed routinely! Was he able to convince his audience that an individual can overpower the trained member of BSF and in defence the BSF kill him or her? We fail to understand how Felani overpowered the BSF member that killed her. If the image of the body of the girl hanging from the barbed wire fails to move India’s conscience, nothing will.
There are many people like Felani, the innocent farmers, who do not even know that crossing the border is a crime and that the area they stand on is India’s lands when they get spotted and killed. BSF’s murderous acts on the border and the weird mentality to defend this in public, as the BSF DG did Thursday, proves one thing: they know they can get away with both the crime and the lies that they utter to shield it. This also reflects a mindset that looks down upon Bangladeshis and does not hesitate to call them ‘termites’. In the past we have seen the BSF beat inhumanly Bangladeshi cattle traders turning them naked as one NDTV video footage demonstrated.
True, goods are smuggled and human trafficking take place along the porous border, but these crimes are committed with people involved from the both sides. If crossing the border is an offence, the
offenders can be detained or arrested and brought to justice.
But killing the aberrant persons, either by BSF or Indian citizens is not the right way to deal with such aberrations. The norm is when an incident of illegal trespass happens, the security guards of the relevant country arrest the trespasser, hold meetings with the counterparts opposite their land, and as per law the culprit is awarded punishment when necessary, satisfactory to both sides. And when the aberrant persons are caught by the common citizens, they should be handed over to respective police for legal action. But what is going on along the Bangladesh and India border, either by the BSF or Indian citizens, blatantly negates a person’s right to justice even if he is a criminal.
Bangladesh and India border is certainly not a war front. These two neighbours have been professing friendship right from the beginning of creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and in the recent years, the friendship has been said to have reached a plateau. It is not that India has not recognised the genuineness of grievances of Bangladesh arising from the border. From the top level, as Pankaj Kumar Singh did Thursday, the nation has committed itself to Bangladesh that it would try to control and zero the tragic incidents caused by the BSF, yet border killings are taking place one after another. According to Human Rights Watch, around 1,000 Bangladeshi civilians were killed by the BSF in a period of 10 years from 2001 to 2010.
