Against the backdrop of increased activity along the borders with Nepal and Bhutan over the past few months, Home Minister Rajnath Singh Thursday asked Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) troops to sharpen their intelligence gathering skills and ensure that terrorist groups are not able to carry out anti-India designs. Addressing SSB officers and jawans at the force’s camp on the occasion of their 52nd Raising Day, he said that keeping in view India’s friendly relations with Nepal and Bhutan, a robust intelligence system is the “most important weapon” along these two borders which are not fenced. SSB has been guarding these frontiers from 2001, when their control was taken from RAW and handed over to the Home Ministry. The SSB not only guards the 1,751-km long Indo-Nepal and the 699-km Indo-Bhutan borders but is also designated as the lead intelligence gathering agency there. [related-post] “I have a firm belief that being a border guarding force you will be successful in stopping any type of anti-national and criminal activity along the Nepal and Bhutan borders. You have had a speciality, your intelligence system. Based on your experiences and good work, you will have to make it better. “I believe that along the sensitive and open Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders, intelligence is the most important weapon for crime control,” he said. Rajnath said the SSB has to use its intelligence network to check “unwanted activities on these two borders so that anti-social elements and terrorist groups are not able to gather there and. carry out any untoward incident” against India. He added that his ministry was “seriously” examining a latest proposal by the force to extend facilities to its “non-uniformed” cadres on par with the uniformed and armed components. Among the 80,000 SSB personnel are nearly 3,000 men and women who work to spread nationalistic messages to counter anti-India propaganda among the border population. Singh also made a special mention of SSB’s Second-in-Command rank officer Rajesh Shivrain, who was killed in a crash when he was co-piloting a BSF flight to Ranchi. “I felt great pain. but no one can stop what is destined,” he said. Rajnath said SSB did a good job in checking human trafficking following the Nepal earthquake.
