BSF kills Bangladeshi on Jessore border
Courtesy New Age 12/12/10 Our Correspondent . Jessore,
The Border Security Force of India beat a Bangladeshi to death on Gatipara border of Benapole in Jessore early Saturday.
The deceased, Amir Hossain, 35, of Gatipara, was a cattle trader, the police said.
The Indian border guards have killed 15 Bangladeshi civilians since September 27, the day on which the directors general of Bangladesh Rifles and the BSF met in Dhaka to discuss border issues.
The BSF troops of Pirojpur camp chased a group of cattle traders along the border in the early hours of Saturday, said Abdul Jabbar, a councillor of Benapole municipality.
According to Jabbar, the BSF troops caught Amir, beat him to death on the spot, and then bayoneted the body. The rest of the cattle traders however managed to flee.
He said, the BSF members later dumped the body into the Isamati, he added.
Being informed by the locals, the Indian police recovered the body from the river, he added.
The commanding officer of 22 Rifles Battalion, lieutenant colonel Md Hasib Alam, said they were yet to receive any confirmed information that any Bangladeshi had been killed by their Indian counterparts.
The BSF also had beaten to death Amir's elder brother Samir Hossain about two months back, Abdul Jabbar said.
Villagers of Gatipara, however, claimed that another Bangladeshi had been missing since the incident.
The killing took place a day after the US-based Human Rights Watch had published a report, which said India and Bangladesh should take immediate steps to end killings of hundreds of their citizens on the West Bengal-Bangladesh border by the Indian border guards.
According to Odhikar, a leading rights organisation, 875 Bangladeshis were killed, 923 wounded by shots, and 933 abducted by the BSF between January 1, 2000 and August 31, 2010.
The BSF troops have killed 66 Bangladeshis in the nine months till November 30 last.
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