It appears that the victims were local traders. As the Khasias sell betel nuts and so the two Bangladeshi nationals went there to buy. But firing on the men and killing them for trespassing is unimaginable and no doubt a crime of highest order. Khasias also kill Bangladeshi nationals in the plain below the Khasia hills in Sylhet border on many occasions and enjoy impunity from the Indian government for such murders. Not only the Khasias, Indian Border Security Forces (BSF) are also regularly shooting on Bangladeshi nationals and enjoying total impunity from such crime.
We don’t know why trespassing should be a cause for killing on a common border when the Indian law provides for only few months imprisonment. The people who are being killed are ordinary people. They are mostly traders who run informal trade with counter-parts on the Indian side. But the Indian government had never discarded such murder as unlawful and punished the murderers. It is rather ignoring such crime systematically with continued impunity and its reluctance to give justice to Felani who was shot and killed by BSF at Kurigram border in 2013 made it clear that killing Bangladesh nationals is justified.
It gives us pain and also leaves one to wonder that when Bangladesh government is having the warmest political relation with India at this moment why BSF and Indian nationals are regularly shooting our nationals. It is unfortunate that Bangladesh-India border is the bloodiest one in the world despite Bangladesh is making all concessions to India. Our government is totally embarrassed to explain to our people why it is so helpless to secure end to border killing. Alone from January to October 2016, rights groups’ estimates suggest that 27 Bangladeshis were killed, 34 received injuries and 19 were abducted by the BSF on long India-Bangladesh border.
We know that border killing figure prominently at every BGB-BSF meeting and there is no dearth of assurance from the Indian side that things well be easier soon. But things remain as dangerous as before. But without Indian government commitment it will never end. In our view Bangladesh must use all diplomatic and other sources of contact with the Indian government to bring an end to border killing. Everybody must know that killing and good neighbourly relations can’t go together. It is conflicting to making relations cordial.
