5 Bangladeshis held in Bihar for not possessing travel documents

Indian Border Security Force (BSF) personnel have arrested five Bangladeshi nationals in Kishanganj district of Bihar while they were trying to return to their native country without any valid travel document, a senior BSF official said.

"The Bangladeshis were apprehended on Thursday as they did not possess any valid travel document," BSF Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Amritlal Tirkey told our New Delhi correspondent.

The arrested Bangladeshis have been identified as: Bakkar, 20; Md Jaleel, 22; Md Rubel, 20; Md Mehboob, 20; and Md Masoom, 19. All of them hail from Thakurgaon district of Bangladesh.

The five arrestes claimed they have been eking out a living at Kulgam in Jammu and Kashmir and they reached Kishanganj on Wednesday evening on their way to return to Bangladesh, the BSF official said.

Although Kishanganj Railway Station is barely 30 kilometres from the international border, they chose to stay back and planned to leave on Thursday morning, Tirkey said.

"We had, in the meantime, received information about the Bangladeshis and their plans to cross the border. When BSF personnel spotted them, they got scared and began to run but were eventually apprehended," he said.

According to Tirkey, the Bangladeshis claimed that they were working as masons in Kulgam and wanted to return home.

"Their belongings contained no incriminating objects. However, they are in our custody and are being interrogated," he also said.

 "Areas along the porous India-Bangladesh border have been put on high alert in the wake of intelligence inputs that terrorists may try to infiltrate in the aftermath of the withdrawal of special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution," the BSF DIG added.