A little piece violence erupted over the weekend when some Indians allegedly killed a Bangladeshi in Bangladesh and hid his body in a border village of Garati in India. The Bangladeshis (some 2000 of them) got so miffed that they surrounded the village and burned the thing down, making more than 200 Indian families homeless. Bangladeshi police has arrested 11 guys for the arson.
Now what is wrong with this picture? Only that we are talking of cross-border drama. Two thousand Bangladeshis just came and burned a village down. What happened to the border security, BSF and all the check posts?
This is because the Indian village of Garati, along with hundreds of others, is inside Bangladesh. And many Bangladeshi villages are inside India! So Indian citizens, (140,000 people) who are under Indian law, are merrily living in villages many kilometers inside the Bangladesh border and vice versa.
How? Bangladesh and India share a 4,156 kilometres-long border, of which 6.1 kilomtres is still un-demarcated (under dispute). Meaning that since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, New Delhi and Dhaka haven't had five minutes to dispose of a frigging 6.1 km of border. Now I am the first one to claim that most international issues are usually too complex but this is 6.1 km. You can walk that much in a decent mall if you shop all day.
While the great government bureaucracies take their sweet time (40 years) to sort this out, about 200,000 people are living in foreign countries, lack basic amenities like water and electricity and have an overall terrible life. Meanwhile, these confusions exacerbate the already growing problems of porous Indo-Bangladesh border like the illegal migration, terrorism, crime and smuggling.
Good job everyone!
Image: India-Bangladesh border map
Image Credit: US Government
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