Guwahati: Assam Police on June 19 (Friday) evening detained 14 suspected Bangladeshi nationals from a guest house in the Arya Nagar locality of Guwahati during a verification drive aimed at identifying illegal intruders in the area. ‘It was a routine drive based on some intel inputs. All the detained people are suspected as of now and proper investigation will reveal the truth”, a senior city police official said.
Acting on intelligence inputs, police teams swooped down on RR Guest House in Arya Nagar, where the group was found staying. The detained individuals include men, women, and children. Officials said suspicion mounted when none of the occupants could produce valid identity or travel documents when questioned by the police.
The drive was part of a routine exercise being carried out by Assam police across the state and Guwahati city to verify the credentials of residents and weed out those illegal infiltrators staying in the city. This latest detention comes just days after a similar incident rattled authorities. On June 11, Railway Police in Guwahati arrested nine Bangladeshi nationals — including two women and three children — from the Guwahati Railway Station after alert co-passengers tipped them off.
The group had been travelling aboard the Silchar-Guwahati Express from Cachar when fellow passengers grew suspicious of their behaviour and quietly alerted railway police. When the train pulled into Guwahati station, officers were waiting. The nine individuals — five men, two women and two children — were taken off the train and questioned. They failed to produce any valid Indian documents.
During interrogation, the group eventually admitted they were Bangladeshi nationals who had entered India illegally through the Cachar border. They told police they crossed the India-Bangladesh border through a river stretch under cover of darkness, guided by a local tout who had arranged everything from the crossing to their train tickets.
According to the arrested individuals, the tout had promised to arrange fake Indian identity documents once they reached Guwahati. Their larger plan, they revealed, was to move on to bigger cities. However, their journey was cut short before any of that could happen. Later the arrested Bangladeshi infiltrators were pushed back through the Mankachar border to Bangladesh.
Police are now investigating the tout network that facilitated the illegal entry and movement of the group. Authorities believe such networks operate with local links on both sides of the border and are responsible for pushing infiltrators deeper into the country.
With detentions being reported in quick succession, security agencies in Assam appear to have sharpened their focus on identifying and acting against illegal residents, particularly in and around Guwahati. Further investigation in both cases are currently underway.
