In a peculiar move, the Border Security Force (BSF) has suspended seven personnel, including an officer posted along the India-Bangla frontier and ordered a Staff Court of enquiry into the self-defence action that resulted in the alleged killing of a Bangladeshi last week for suspected cross-border gold smuggling.
Officials said the incident took place on Saturday along the Banpur border post in Krishnanagar district of West Bengal when a BSF patrol party laid an ambush and intercepted a group of suspected smugglers about 300 metres from the International Border (IB) on the Indian side.
Soon after laying the ambush, about a dozen persons carrying ‘dha’ (sharp edged knifes) surrounded the BSF men and isolated constable D Sawant who was just armed with a ‘lathi’.
The BSF party leader, A Atreya, challenged the smugglers to release Sawant and when they did not heed, he fired a shot from his non-lethal Pump Action Gun (PAG), officials said.
Subsequently, when the suspected smugglers did not honour Atreya’s appeal, the officer fired the second shot which was taken by a Bangladeshi boy identified as Sajjal Halsena, a resident of Chuadenga district of Bangladesh.
The teenager later succumbed to his injuries after he was taken by his friends to the other side of the border.
Patrol parties along the border keep a mix of lethal and non-lethal weapons as per an understanding between the two sides few years back to minimise border killings.
Atreya, a commando-trained officer of 113th Battalion, has recently become the face of the BSF in a international documentary which brought to the audience the exploits of the over 50-year-old force raised in 1965.
BSF headquarters apparently took a stern view of the case as it came at a time when a high-level delegation of the BSF, led by its Director General KK Sharma, is in Dhaka at present for the annual border talks with their counterparts Border Guard Bangladesh.