The Indian Border Security Force on Wednesday handed over the body of the member of Border Guard Bangladesh who died at an Indian hospital while undergoing treatment after being shot in BSF firing along the Benapole border in Jashore on early Monday.
BSF’s South Bengal Frontier spokesperson, deputy inspector general AK Arya, told New Age they had handed over the body of Mohammad Roisudddin to their Bangladeshi counterpart after official formalities.
A Bangladeshi police official said that they received the body at about 10:00am and sent it to the district hospital for post-mortem examinations.
BGB and BSF made contradictory statements over the death of the soldier, Mohammad Roisudddin, who died in an Indian hospital on Monday hours after the incident that took place at Dhannya Khola on the India-Bangladesh border at about 5:00am.
Roisudddin was posted to the 49th Border Guard Battalion in Jashore.
BSF’s South Bengal Frontier spokesperson, deputy inspector general AK Arya, told New Age that they spotted the BGB sepoy clad in a lungi, t-shirt, and gamcha (traditional towel).
In a statement, the BGB Jashore battalion stated that one of their patrol teams challenged a group of cattle ‘smugglers’ when they were coming from the Indian side. It said the cattle ‘smugglers’ tried to run away towards India.
At this point, BGB sepoy Mohammad Roisudddin chased the cattle ‘smugglers’ and lost contact with his team due to thick fog. The BGB statement said they later came to know that he sustained injuries in a BSF firing and was under treatment in an Indian hospital.
The BSF South Bengal Frontier said that the BSF Jawans, out of humanity, gave first aid to the person injured by the bullet and took him to the hospital, where he died.
BSF claimed its Jawans had no idea that Border Guard Bangladesh personnel could also be with the smugglers.
The BSF, in their statement on Tuesday, said that a jawan on duty saw some ‘unknown suspicious smugglers’ coming from India towards Bangladesh with four to five cattle.
The jawan challenged the smugglers, but the smugglers, seeing the BSF jawan alone, surrounded him from all sides and attacked him with sharp-edged sickles.
Sensing danger and finding no other option, the Jawan fired from his weapon at the smugglers in ‘self-defence.’