24 Bangladeshi infiltrators arrested from village near coastal border in Bengal's Sundarbans

Kolkata, April 15 (IANS) As many as 24 Bangladeshi infiltrators, including women and children, have been arrested from a village close to the coastal border with Bangladesh in the Sundarbans area of West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district during the last 24 hours, officials said on Tuesday.

Of the 24 infiltrators, 11 are women, nine are men, and the remaining four are children. They were arrested from a village located within the Chilmari forest in the Sundarbans area.

According to the Superintendent of Baruipur police district, Palash Chandra Dhali, a police team conducted a raid on the village, based on specific information from their sources of illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators hiding at the village within the Chilmari forest.

"None of them has any valid document of permission to enter India. In the face of interrogation, they admitted that they entered the Indian side through the coastal route," Dhali said.

The arrested Bangladeshi citizens will be presented to a district court on Wednesday. It is learnt that none of the 24 Bangladeshi residents were even carrying any document that could prove their identities as Bangladeshi citizens.

The police are now interrogating them to know their real intention to enter the Indian territory. Some of them had admitted that they had come to India in search of a livelihood.

The investigating officials are not ruling out the possibility of the involvement of an international human trafficking racket behind this development.

Already, security agencies, both of the central and state, have identified certain remote islands in the Sundarbans area as the probable safe shelters for Bangladeshis illegally crossing over to the Indian side through the coastal borders.

The most vulnerable islands identified on this count are the 13 in the Gosaba block in the district, considering the lack of security arrangements there because of their remote nature.

As per reports, the Border Security Force (BSF) has its camp in just one of these 13 islands, which are often used as temporary shelters by the fishermen from the district, who frequently venture out to the deep seas.

--IANS

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