Click to play videoMalda: On paper, a 4,000 kilometre long border separates India and Bangladesh. On the ground, little does. CNN-IBN travelled to the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal to expose just how vulnerable our eastern border was to terrorist infiltration.
In Malda, a CNN-IBN team captured suspected infiltrators on camera, revealing how easily terrorists from Al-Qaeda-backed terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toibba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islam enter India from Bangladesh.
Men like Safiqul, alias Dipak, a suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist used to regularly enter and leave India from Bangladesh, until he was arrested by the crime branch of the West Bengal Police in Harishchandrapur in Malda in January 2009, from the house of an ex-army driver.
"He has confessed before the police that he had brought two Lashkar-eToiba terrorists from Bangladesh to Jammu and Kashmir. Apart from that he was given the task of opening a shop in front of Siliguri cantonment and inform the Bangaldeshi handler about the movement of the Army," said Siddhinath Gupta, DIG, CID (Operations).
CNN-IBN decided to trace the trail of terror along the border in Malda, which Safiqul allegedly used, and find out just how easy it is for infiltrators to enter India.
At the border, there is an improvised border fence, which is not much of a deterrent for a determined infiltrator. The small border pillars are the only things which mark the international border. And at night, they have little meaning.
"The infiltrators are not using any other border region as much as they use the India-Bangladesh border. This is why the BSF is very concerned about this region and tightened the security here," says a Border Security Force (BSF) soldier Nilkanta Tada.
BSF soldiers like Rai Singh Amar work nearly 14 hours a day and even longer, when they are on night patrol.
But despite their vigil, day after day, night after night, people make their way across the porous border. Each soldier has to guard a stretch of around 500 metres to 1 kilometer, armed with nothing more than a gun and a torch.
And infiltrators are always waiting to make their move.
"Yes they do. They watch our movements and when we cross a point or turn our back they cross over. Sometimes they also cause diversions to distract us and take advantage of the ensuing chaos," says Rai Singh Amar.
Even if people stand merely 15 feet away from a BSF check post, they can't ben seen. But the infiltrators know that the BSF soldiers are there.
So an illegal migrant, or even a terrorist, can easily evade a check post and make his or her way into India.
The BSF's vigil along the eastern border has been scaled up significantly.
Recognising the BSF's operational handicaps, the government has started a modernisation drive. Some soldiers have been given night vision devices, to enable them to see in the dark.
But even with the help of such device in dense fog and darkness, it is impossible to achieve effective domination of the border.
Off camera senior BSF officers admit that some corrupt soldiers do accept inducements from infiltrators. But along the eastern border, over worked and stretched thin, BSF soldiers are still India's unsung heroes.
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