Shaheed Dakua from Panbari village in Lalmonirhat district in Bangladesh has been driving smuggled Indian cattle across the border for 50 years.
He usually brings four cows or buffaloes at a time because anything higher is not only hard to control but also raises the chances of getting caught at the border.
He can earn up to Tk10,000 for bringing each of these consignments for local smuggling bigshots; but if things go wrong – which they often do – he might get killed for illegal trespassing.
In fact, according to Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), 90% of Bangladeshis killed at the border are cattle smugglers.
People like Shaheed are called “dangowal” – the local term for a shepherd. His son Hasan Dakua, whom Dhaka Tribune correspondents met at a tea stall near the Burimari Land Port in Lalmonirhat, is an apprentice to his father.
There are entire villages of dangowals in these bordering districts in the country’s north and west. In fact, most people in Hasan’s village are drivers of smuggled cattle.
He might be just 18 years old, but he has already married twice. He first got married at the age of 14. After his first wife died, he got married again and has two children with his second wife.
Interestingly, most male residents of these border areas marry around the age of 15. Locals said families tend to get their sons married early so that they do not stay back in India after going there as a dangowal.
An “assignment” of bringing in a cattle consignment can be divided into three parts: collecting the cattle from India; driving the animals through the border; and finally handing them over to cattle traders on this side.
Part one
This usually begins in one of the Indian villages near the border. Bangladeshi traders place demand to Indian brokers, known as mahajans.
Based on the demand, the mahajans collect adult cattle from surrounding villages. Depending on the demand placed by the Bangladeshi trader, the mahajans can collect up to 50 heads of cattle.
The money is transferred mainly in two ways. The Bangladeshi traders either give the money to the dangowals if the consignment is small, or transfer it through informal channels such as hundi. Sometimes the two parties meet at unguarded border points and just throw the money over the fence.
According to Hasan Dakua, they sometimes smuggle drugs like phensedyl and even humans along with the cattle. But that is another story.
One dangowal usually does not bring more than four cows at a time. If the size of the consignment is 50, then the importer here sends a team of 12 to 13 dangowals with the necessary information.
Communication is not a problem because Bangladeshi mobile phone SIM cards work in the Indian bordering villages, sometimes up to 2km inside Indian territory.
Part two
The dangowals cross the border in the middle of the night, generally during the new moon. On the darkest of nights, they may even cross the border twice.
There is no fence at the Patgram border in Lalmonirhat. There is a narrow shallow canal at the border and the dangowals, along with the cattle, walk or swim across to reach Bangladeshi territory.
But not all borders are unfenced. For example, dangowals have to often cut the barbed-wire fences at the borders in Kurigram district to pass through with the cattle.
Smuggling rings have special arrangements with the local units of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), and customs officials, police and local political leaders of both countries.
The dangowals have to share their incomes with all of them in exchange for free passage across the border.
When the cattle reach Bangladeshi territory, BGB teams catch the dangowals and the animals and inform customs officials.
Part three
The customs officials come in the morning, seize the cattle and take them to makeshift cowsheds, locally known as khatals or bits.
In the khatal, customs officials speak with the dangowals, take Tk510 for each cow, issues a token or a receipt and frees the cattle. The token or receipt number is stamped on the back of the cows. This money goes into the government’s books as revenue.
The dangowals then bring the cows to designated places. From there, after having received the cattle, the Bangladesh trader sends the cows to markets. Before Eid-ul-Azha, the trader might bring the cattle to animal markets in Dhaka and other big cities.
Against costs of about Tk10,000, depending on the market and size of the animal, the selling price of a buffalo or cow can range from Tk30,000 to Tk3 lakh.
