Three Bangladeshis arrested in Tripura’s Unakoti district

“We have booked a case. They were forwarded to court today. We have started our investigation and shall take required steps,” said officer in-charge of Irani police station Jatindra Das.

Their arrest comes only three days after a similar incident where three Rohingya nationals were arrested by the BSF at Dharmanagar railway station in north Tripura.

According to preliminary investigation, the trio arrested at Kailasahar came to Bangladesh from Myanmar a month ago and entered India through Irani village in Tripura’s Unakoti district on March 18. A diary with notes in Urdu, purchased from Bangladesh, was recovered from their possession. The police also seized two mobile phones and 2,580 Bangla taka from them.

Last year, in different cross-border operations across Tripura, 369 people were arrested, including 59 Rohingya, 160 Indians and 150 Bangladeshi nationals, a BSF report shows. The figures are higher than the previous year when 208 ‘intruders’ were arrested in 2021 while trying to cross the Indo-Bangla international border in different parts of Tripura, including 115 Indian nationals and 93 Bangladeshi citizens.

Tripura, which is surrounded by Bangladesh on three sides, shares an 856-km-long international border, parts of which are still unfenced in patches due to local disputes on land and demarcation-related issues.