Home affairs adviser retired lieutenant general Jahangir Alam Chowdhury on Monday said that they had allowed the Border Guard Bangladesh to procure non-lethal weapons like sound grenades and tear gas shells to use in the border areas.
鈥楽ound grenades and tear gas shells are being procured for the BGB,鈥� said home adviser while briefing reporters after holding the 6th law and order meeting of advisers at the secretariat in the capital Dhaka.
Asked why the BGB did not use any force when the Indian Border Security Force used sound grenades and tear gas shells on Chowka border in Chapainawabganj on January 18, Jahangir said that BGB did not have such non-lethal weapons.
鈥楬ow would they use such things if they don鈥檛 have them? Now, we have permitted the BGB to procure those and those would be procured,鈥� the adviser said.
Jahangir, however, did not disclose the amount of sound grenades and tear gas shells to be procured.
He said that tender would be invited and then non-lethal weapons would be procured.
He said that the overall border situation was now stable.
Indian villagers clashed with Bangladeshis over harvesting crops on the no man鈥檚 land along the Chowka border in Chapainawabganj in the morning of January 18, leaving three people injured, causing fresh tension along the border.
Video footage of the chase and counter-chase showed the explosion of teargas shells and hand grenades on the border.
Tensions along the Bangladesh-India border have continued since the final week of December 2024 as the Border Guard Bangladesh and local people protested against the BSF鈥檚 constructing barbed wire fences at five points along the border in Chapainawabganj, Naogaon and Lalmonirhat.
According to international law, no permanent structures or fences, except for agricultural activities, can be placed within 150 yards of the border pillars of either country.
On January 12, the foreign ministry summoned the Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, Pranay Verma, and expressed concern over the construction of barbed wire fences and protested at the recent killing of a Bangladeshi national by the Indian BSF on the border.
India has already constructed barbed wire fences in areas of 3,271 kilometres of the 4,156km border, Jahangir said recently.
