Click to play videoNew Delhi: The porous and soft Indo-Bangladesh border is becoming a hub for terrorist infiltration.
A CNN-IBN investigation shows how fragile and unguarded our borders in the east are. Rampant smuggling of goods has shown how completely ineffective the border fencing has been at places, and how this route has been used and utilised by infiltrators.
People of the bordering villages simply walk across from Bangladesh into India and vice versa as the villages are just next to each other and the houses are cheek by jowl.
The people live in such close proximity that it becomes difficult for the Border Security Force (BSF) to distinguish between Bangladeshis and Indians.
It's easy for an infiltrator or terrorist to walk in and to take shelter in any house in the villages.
So infiltrators can get into a safe house, stay there for a period of time to get their Indian documentation basically a ration card and carry on into heart of the country.
CNN-IBN met Aslam in Bangladeshi territory who said that he spends most of his time in the Indian border village of Haripukur.
The houses along the South Dinajpur stretch of the border show how it's virtually impossible for the government to check border infiltration through fencing.
Terrorists don't need an elaborate plan to enter India. All they have to do is reach a border village in Bangladesh, which is contiguous with a village in India and then simply walk across.
The border village of Haripukur exemplifies the problem of effectively dominating India-Bangladesh border.
In villages like Haripukur it's impossible for an outsider to figure out where the border begins and where it ends. At times even BSF patrols are confused and have to tread cautiously.
A house is the village stocks up goods that are eventually smuggled into Bangladesh. For instance, there is bottle phensedyl that are smuggled from India into Bangladesh.
The Zero Line has no sanctity in the border villages and smuggling is rampant, with the Bangladesh Rifles often looking the other way.
Many villagers who live along the border depend on smuggling for their livelihood.
Not surprisingly, they dislike the BSF.
The moment a sack full of cough syrup bottles is found, the villagers close ranks.
With houses so close to each other and the proximity to the border makes BSF's job extremely difficult.
In fact, they have made a proposal to shift such border villages further inside so that there is a separation zone, a buffer zone between the Zero Line and the border outpost that BSF mans.
But residents of Haripukar village are against any such move.
"It would be a great inconvenience for us since all our properties and lands are here. Our earning comes from our lands and it can not be shifted back," says Sheikh Younis, a resident of Haripukur.
A Mosque at the border is uniquely placed. While the main building is in Bangladesh, the wall is in India.
Villagers tell off camera that at night infiltrators come in and it is impossible even for the BSF to be at every corner of the border villages like Haripukur.
The way it is at the moment it's impossible to either fence or to put soldier at every point.
While relatives on both sides of the border, people move easily and there is a booming illegal trade of smuggling goods.
A narrow strip of land in the middle of a pond marks the Zero Line. An elderly Bangladeshi man showed the border pillar that lies submerged.
The border is very porous and it is just impossible to have a human chain of BSF across the border to plug it.
So when New Delhi says that the Indo-Bangladesh border has been sealed the reality is that any can break the seal by just walking across.
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