Indian forces reportedly shoot individuals crossing the Bangladesh-India border, claiming they are preventing smuggling and human trafficking. A resident from a northwestern Bangladeshi region told DW that 51% of the local Hindu community lives in the area and has relatives in India, indicating that many crossers are innocent.
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00:00Bangladesh forces patrol the border with India, a friendly neighbour.
00:06Here at the Thakurgaon district in north-western Bangladesh, the Border Guard or BJP say they
00:12are trying to prevent criminal activity.
00:15It's a busy region on both sides of the frontier.
00:22Indian forces on the other side publish pictures like these of alleged smugglers and their
00:29illicit goods.
00:31They say human trafficking is also rampant across the border.
00:37Bangladeshi commanders say they see local people getting into trouble on the border
00:42and urge their soldiers to try to prevent misunderstandings.
00:49People are trying to cross the international boundary due to various reasons.
00:54We have relatives over there and we are doing a lot of awareness program.
00:59But some of the times, some of the times they are taking the opportunity and they are trying
01:05to cross the international boundary and thereby some incident occurs.
01:08But we are hopeful from the BJP side that the way we are trying to motivate the people
01:13and the way we have increased the patrol activity and also the way we are regularly meeting
01:20with the local community and religious leader, hopefully this will reduce and people will
01:24be aware and they will be more careful along the border line.
01:29But locals are dying.
01:31This is the home of Jayanta Kumar Singh.
01:34He was 14.
01:35He is the second child to be killed at the border in recent weeks.
01:41His family says Indian forces killed him when he was near the frontier.
01:46An Indian official told a local newspaper the boy was part of a group trying to cut
01:51through a barbed wire fence.
01:54Jayanta's uncle says when Jayanta's father went to try to collect the boy's body, he
02:01was shot too.
02:03The father survived but is still in hospital.
02:08We are deeply saddened and shocked that Indian border forces shot us Hindus.
02:14When Jayanta's body was given to us, it was dismembered.
02:18His face could not be seen.
02:20It was ruined.
02:22There was a bullet in the neck.
02:28Two days later, when the body was given to us at night, we could not clean it because
02:36the body was rotten.
02:42Religious and family ties stretch across the border, meaning innocent crossings will continue.
02:4851% of the local Hindu community lives in my constituency and all of them have relatives
02:56in India.
02:58Such extrajudicial killings should not happen again.
03:02The Hindu community here cannot accept it and has condemned it.
03:09The Indian border forces fired at Jayanta.
03:13If he committed a crime, there should be a punishment.
03:16But should he be shot dead?
03:21The Deputy Inspector General of the Indian Border Forces, BSF, for South Bengal, sent
03:26DW a statement.
03:28He said both sides were working on strengthening mutual trust and that his officers refrained
03:33from using force.
03:37People here see their neighbours and even children being killed when they stray too
03:41close to the border, whether to innocently cross over or make trouble.
03:48Rare investigations hardly ever lead to prosecutions, leaving families like Jayanta's unclear they'll
03:55ever see justice.