Fence Them Out

The Delhi High Court, taking serious note of infiltration ofBangladeshi nationals into India, served notices, on April 26, 2006, to the chiefsecretaries of the five bordering states, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalayaand Mizoram, to depute their respective counsels to appraise the Court on theaction taken by their state governments in this regard. A division bench of theHigh Court, comprising Justice M.K. Sharma and Justice Reva Khetrapal,reportedly said that illegal Bangladeshi migrants had been infiltrating intoIndia in hordes and should be deported immediately.

Much has been said about illegal migration from Bangladesh intostates like Assam and Tripura and its impact on the demography of these states.But there has been little systematic study of the problem even in these states,and none whatsoever in states such as Meghalaya. Worse, states such as Manipurand Nagaland, which do not share a border with Bangladesh, but which havealready been subjected to the negative impact of trends in illegal migration,are entirely outside the scope of current scrutiny. Data is conspicuous by itsabsence, while anecdotal evidence is abundant.

In Manipur, for instance, illegal migration from Bangladesh viaAssam is adding to the complexities of the existing problem of Chin infiltrationfrom Myanmar. In late April, 2003, Bangladeshi immigrants in Jiribamsub-division of the Imphal East District teamed up with a local Islamistmilitant outfit, the People’s United Liberation Front (PULF), to avenge thedeath of an illegal migrant. At least 300 Bengali Hindus were hounded out oftheir villages.

Such has been the scale of Bangladeshi immigration into Manipurthat an influential civil society organization, the United Committee Manipur (UCM),published a 231-page report, ‘Influx of Migrants into Manipur: A Threat to theIndigenous Ethnic People’ in December 2005, indicating that migrants fromMyanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal would, in 30 years’ time, "either marginaliseor wipe out all the ethnic groups" in the state.

Similarly, Bangladeshi migrants in Nagaland now constitute aserious threat to the demographic balance of the state. Nagaland, in the 2001Census, registered the highest population growth rate (64.41 per cent) in thecountry, and a major proportion of this increase can be ascribed to illegalmigration. All the manual works, construction labour, taxi drivers, rickshawpullers and cultivation are largely done by Bangladeshi migrants. According toone estimate, Bangladeshi nationals run almost half of the shops in Dimapur, thecommercial hub of the state, and in the capital, Kohima. The National SocialistCouncil of Nagaland – Khaplang (NSCN-K) has been reportedly issuing temporarywork permits to the immigrants and has even set a permissible number ofimmigrants per district. Many of the illegal immigrants have married local Nagawomen.

Tripura, which shares an 856kilometre border with Bangladesh, has been widely acknowledged to have beentransformed from a tribal majority state into a tribal minority state in lessthan six decades, and this is now an irreversible feature of the state’sdemography. There is ample evidence that illegal migration continues to takeplace in the state, though the scale fluctuates with changes in the politicaldispensations in Bangladesh. In addition, the porous border also facilitates themovement of militants, criminals, smugglers and drug peddlers, mostly actingunder the protection or at the behest of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officers andpersonnel. Some incidents reported in 2006 are illustrative:

January 9: A Bangladeshismuggler, Mohammad Mahir Miah, was arrested along with 13 packets of brown sugarand aluminum foil by the Border Security Force (BSF) in the bordering area ofBagulpur under the Narsingarh police station in the West Tripura District.

January 16: Twounidentified Bangladeshi infiltrators were killed by Border Security Force (BSF)personnel at the border village of Kumarghat in North Tripura District.

January 25: ABangladeshi forest ranger was arrested with a gang of timber smugglers by BSFpersonnel from a reserve forest in the Khowai sub-division of West Tripuradistrict.

February 4: ABangladeshi national, Suban Miah, suspected to be involved in the April 16,2005, killing of a BSF officer, Assistant Commandant Jeevan Kumar, was arrestedat a place under the Lankamura Border outpost.

April 19: At least 13Bangladeshi nationals, including seven women and six children, were arrested byBSF personnel while infiltrating from the international border at differentplaces under Lankamura outpost in the West Tripura District.

As recently as May 20, 2006,BSF personnel pushed back a group of Bangladesh Rifles jawans who wereescorting unidentified men to measure land inside Indian territory near theIndo-Bangladesh border along the Jaintia Hills District. Police sources said themen, claiming to be landlords, came to Lakuna and Amki (under Amlaremsub-division) villages and started measuring land, which they claimed, belongedto Bangladesh (both India and Bangladesh have been claiming a 12-acre stretch inLakuna and Amki villages on the border).

Meghalaya, which shares a 443kilometre border with Bangladesh, has served as a traditional route forBangladesh-based militants operating in India’s Northeast. The Garo Hills havealso provided significant routes for drugs and arms smuggling. Little, however,is known about the scale of infiltration of Bangladeshis into the State.According to one estimate, illegal migrants, outnumber locals in the Jaintiacoal belt. In fact, official inaction in containing infiltration is forcinglocals to arbitrarily adopt harsh measures. Thus, on March 6, 2006, villagersfrom Nongjri-Umnuih-Nongshken area along the India-Bangladesh border in the EastKhasi Hills district announced a pogrom under the call, "Gun down aBangladeshi criminal and collect Rupees 3,000", in protest against the allegedkilling of people and looting of agricultural produce by Bangladeshiinfiltrators. Such vigilantism threatens to grow in the wake of a spate ofcriminal incidents involving Bangladeshis. Some recent incidents include:

February 13: TheSuperintendent of Bholaganj Land Custom Station in the East Khasi HillsDistrict, J. Das, was abducted by unidentified Bangladeshis. Das’ dead bodywas subsequently recovered from Bholaganj along the Bangladesh border fencingarea on February 20.

April 9: A Bangladeshiinfiltrator was killed by local villagers in the West Garo Hills area.

April 10: A Bangladeshiinfiltrator was shot dead by the BSF personnel in the West Garo Hills area.

April 16 : The easternzone unit of the Khasi Students Union (KSU) ‘captured’ at Umtrew in the RiBhoi district at least 20 Bangladeshi labourers who were reportedly brought by aperson with the advice of an engineer working with the North Eastern IndiraGandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences in Shillong.

Available data indicates thatthe state government’s efforts at containing the ongoing infiltration havebeen handicapped by poor detection and an even poorer record of prosecutions andconvictions. Meghalaya Home Minister, H. Donkupar R. Lyngdoh, while respondingto a supplementary question raised by a Congress legislator, Robert GarnettLyngdoh, on March 21, 2006, informed the Legislative Assembly that 3,094infiltrators were detained in 2001 out of which just 54 were prosecuted. In2002, a total of 2,537 persons were detained on suspicion and 42 of them wereconvicted. In the 2003, the number of detentions was 2,157 and the convictionfigure was 72. The detention figure in 2004 was 1,596 with just 18 convictions.Till March 2006, 1,463 persons had been detected as foreigners and 14 convicted.

The Central Forces haven’tfared any better. According to a status report submitted by the BSF before theDelhi High Court on May 22, just 31 Bangladeshi nationals were deported fromMeghalaya between January and April 2006. None of the other atates have yetfiled a reply with the High Court, but a similar scenario is believed to prevailas far as the other states are concerned.

Detection, however, can hardlybe the solution to the infiltration problem. Deportation of such infiltratorsremains a troublesome affair as Bangladesh continues to refuse to acknowledgethe nationality of such illegal migrants, or to permit or accept their return toits territory. The Bangladeshi press is, in fact, rife with reports that claimthat the ‘BSF pushes in Indians to Bangladeshi territory’. And on manyoccasions such ‘pushed in’ people are pushed out by BDR personnel in notime. There can be little doubt that infiltration and other cross-bordercriminal enterprises need to be dealt on the border itself. And this furtherunderlines the need for better border management of which border fencing is anintegral part.

Fencing has been suggested asan effective method against infiltration worldwide, as the American exampleexplicitly demonstrates. The United States House of Representatives passed ameasure, (H.R. 4437) on December 16, 2005, that calls for 698 miles of borderfencing to be built in five strategic locations along the international borderwith Mexico. The Senate on May 25, 2006, also passed a measure (S. 2611) toauthorize 370 miles of new fencing. Currently, there are only about 75 miles ofexisting fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Border Patrol statisticsreveal that these measures have had significant impact; the numbers of illegalaliens apprehended and amounts of narcotics seized have decreased drasticallysince fencing was installed.

Fencing has also been extremelyeffective in India, along the western borders, curbing the movement of militantsand activities of smugglers and subversives. There is little reason to believethat such steps cannot be replicated along India’s eastern frontiers.

Indian attempts at fencing theborders with Bangladesh have, however, remained tardy, to say the least. UnderPhase-I, which started as far back as 1986, 854 kilometres of fencing waserected, as on March 31, 2006. Another 1,448 kilometres of fencing was completedunder Phase-II, which in fact aimed to fence 2,429 kilometres. Worse, accordingto the ministry of home affairs, the 854 kilometre fence built in Phase-I hasalready been "damaged" at "most of the stretches" and thus, has"ceased to be effective in controlling illegal cross border activities". TheMinistry plans to start replacing the damaged fencing during 2006-07.

With political perspectivescloud the vision of the policy makers, and a high measure of administrativefoot-dragging and incompetence, infiltration into the northeastern region can beexpected to remain a serious problem in the foreseeable future.

Bibhu Prasad Routray isResearch Fellow and Sandipani Dash is Research Assistant at the Institute forConflict Management.
Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal