An Indian court yesterday reportedly sent a member of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) to jail on charges of illegally intruding into India.
Rab director general (DG) Mokhlesur Rahman told the Dhaka Tribune on Monday evening no members of the elite force were detained inside the Indian territory of West Tripura.
He said, either the person detained by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) gave a false identity or the Indian media has the person’s wrong identity.
A senior official of the South Asia wing of the foreign ministry told the Dhaka Tribune on Monday they had no knowledge of the incident.
The Indian daily, The Hindu reported yesterday an “intruder soldier” of Rab landed in Indian jail after the BSF “failed” to hand him over to the Bangladeshi counterpart, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB).
A court in Sonamura in Seepahijala district of West Tripura sent Mohammad Milan Hussain, on charges of “violating” the Indian Passport Act, to judicial custody for two weeks.
Hussain was part of a “Rab contingent” that “infiltrated” the Indian side in Rahimpur village, adjacent to the border on Saturday to search for consignments of the banned cough syrup Phensidyle, which is smuggled to Bangladesh in large quantities from India. Villagers protested when a woman and a few others were injured during the raid.
“The villagers caught one Rab man while the rest fled across the border,” Timir Das, Seepahijala additional superintendent of police (ASP) is quoted in The Hindu.
The ASP said the Rab men were in civilian clothes but armed.
Hussain told the BSF and police their team was headed by a senior officer called “Kamrulzaman.”
The BSF first took custody of the “intruder” and took him to Ashabari camp where Indian security and intelligence officials interrogated him. A BSF official said: “He cooperated during questioning and we believe he just complied with the order to conduct a search in the village.”
