Guwahati: The India-Bangladesh border is on edge. In less than a week, three Bangladeshi nationals have been killed in separate BSF firing incidents — one in West Bengal and two in Tripura — as security forces intensify operations along the frontier.
A Bangladeshi intruder was shot dead by BSF personnel around 2:00am on May 15, near sub-pillar No. 6 of the 905 main border pillar in the Coachbehar district. The intruder killed in action was identified as Khademul Islam.
Sources said Khademul and a group of 10 to 12 intruders tried to cross over to Indian territory in an attempt to lift cows. The group entered around 150 yards inside Indian territory. Troops from the Paglamari BSF camp under the 78th BSF Battalion opened fire after several repeated warnings.
Sources in Bangladesh said that Khademul suffered bullet injuries to his hand, back and face. His companions dragged him back across the border into Bangladesh.
Six days earlier, on May 9, two Bangladeshi intruders were killed in a BSF operation along the zero line in Tripura’s Sepahijala district.
The killed intruders were identified as Nabir Hussain, 40, and Md Mursalin, 22. Both were smugglers.
BSF troops on routine night patrol spotted a group attempting to smuggle goods from the Indian side into Bangladesh. The jawans challenged the group and issued repeated warnings to halt. The group ignored them — and then turned aggressive, pelting the BSF personnel with stones and bricks.
The troops exercised restraint as long as they could. When the situation turned violent and uncontrollable, they fired rounds from Pump Action Guns in self-defence. Both men were injured and immediately shifted to a government hospital, where they were declared dead.
Following post-mortem examinations, the bodies were formally handed over to Bangladeshi authorities in the presence of officials from both sides of the border — a standard diplomatic protocol that was followed to the letter. A BSF personal who remains to be anonymous said that the security forces have intensified patrolling in the border specially in the suspected cross over areas.
BSF in full alert
These incidents do not exist in a vacuum. The BSF has been in heightened alert mode along the entire India-Bangladesh border ever since the political regime shift in Bangladesh following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024.
What makes the current moment strategically significant is the political alignment on the Indian side of the border. For the first time, all three states that share a border with Bangladesh — West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam — now have BJP governments in power.
West Bengal brought in the Suvendu Adhikari-led BJP government in the 2026 elections. Tripura under Chief Minister Manik Saha and Assam under Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma are already firmly in the BJP column.
Notably, Adhikari himself — speaking in Guwahati last week at Sarma’s swearing-in — said the “Assam model” of tackling illegal infiltration must be replicated in West Bengal without delay, and that his government’s very first Cabinet meeting had initiated steps in that direction.
