A six-day director general-level conference between Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and Indian Border Security Force (BSF) formally began here on Sunday morning.
BSF DG Shri Subhash Joshi is leading a 20-member Indian delegation to the border conference, while the home side is being led by his Bangladesh counterpart Major General Aziz Ahmed.
The conference will end on September 18 with the signing of a Joint Record of Discussion.
Sources at the BGB headquarters said the home side is likely to raise at the conference issues relating to security at the porous Indo-Bangla border, including the killing of unarmed Bangladeshi nationals by BSF and Indian citizens, cross-border movement of locals and criminals, smuggling of Indian firearms and narcotics into Bangladesh and illegal trespassing by BSF and Indian nationals into Bangladesh territory.
The possibility of holding Deputy Commissioner (DC)-level meeting of frontier districts of both sides regularly is expected to come up at the conference for discussion.
The border conference is being held in the wake of verdict in the Felani murder case. Felani Khatun, a 15-year-old Bangladeshi girl, was shot dead by a BSF man while she was entering Bangladesh over the barbed-wire fences along Anantapur border point in Kurigram district on January 7, 2011, triggering a global outcry.
On September 6, a special court, constituted by the Indian Border Security (BSF), in its verdict acquitted the lone accused in the case, BSF constable Amiya Ghosh, of the charge of killing Felani.
The verdict also drew strong criticisms prompting the BSF authority to decide to revise the murder trial.
The DG-level meeting between the two border guard forces is a biannual affair with each country hosting its counterpart at its national capital.
The last BGB-BSF DG-level border conference was held in New Delhi on March 18 this year.
Source: UNBConnect
