By IANS,
Shillong : Infiltration from Bangladesh is posing a demographic threat due to vast stretches of the India-Bangladesh border being unfenced, a top police officer said Friday.
“Infiltration is still taking place because of the unfenced border,” Sudesh Kumar, Border Security Force (BSF) Inspector General (Assam-Meghalaya Frontier), told journalists here.
Kumar said that due to opposition from villagers, about 130 km of India’s border with Bangladesh in the Jaintia Hills sector alone has not been fenced and the area remains vulnerable to infiltration.
“We have identified vulnerable areas where we are conducting joint patrolling in those sensitive areas,” he added.
Meghalaya share a 443 km international border with Bangladesh.
Kumar said that there was an urgent need to fence the entire stretch of India’s border with Bangladesh to prevent infiltration and cross-border terrorism.
On Thursday, the BSF arrested an ULFA “captain”, Dergrah Saronia alias Ananda Das, after he infiltrated from Bangladesh to India via the West Garo Hills. Saronia, a member of the ULFA central committee, was arrested from the Chandabui area.
Kumar also said that violence in the northeast had decreased mainly because of the meeting between union Home Minister P.C. Chidambaram, BSF chief Raman Srivastava and Border Guard Bangladesh chief Maj. Gen. Anwar Hussain when a Border Management Coordinated Plan was formulated.