Dhaka on Thursday lodged a protest with New Delhi about the killing of a 13-year-old Bangladeshi girl along the border with India earlier this month.
Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused India’s Border Security Force of killing the girl, Shwarna Das, on September 1. However, the Hindustan Times quoted unidentified Indian officials as saying that the 13-year-old was shot dead by the Border Guard Bangladesh while trying to enter India without documents.
Border Security Force personnel reportedly found the girl’s body on Monday morning with bullet wounds at the zero line ahead of the border fence between the two countries. The body was handed over to the Border Guards Bangladesh on Tuesday evening.
An unidentified Border Security Force official was quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying that the Border Guard Bangladesh initially refused to accept Das’s body, claiming that she was not a Bangladeshi citizen. “But our probe revealed that she was from Kalaura police station area in Bangladesh,” the official said.
The Bangladeshi foreign ministry, however, accused the Border Security Force of killing the girl and expressed “deep concerns” about it in a protest note sent to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka on Thursday.
“The Government of Bangladesh reminded that such incidents of border killing are undesirable and unwarranted and such actions are in violation of the provisions of the Joint Indo-Bangladesh Guidelines for Border Authorities, 1975,” the ministry said.
Bangladesh urged India to prevent a repetition of such killings and to “conduct enquiries into all border killings, identify the responsible persons and bring them to justice”.
Several Bangladeshi citizens have reportedly tried to cross over to India fearing persecution after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned from her post on August 5 in the wake of widespread protests against her Awami League government. Three days after Hasina resigned and fled to India, Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus took over as the head of an interim government in Bangladesh.
Also read: The human and economic costs of the militarised India-Bangladesh border
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