Bangladesh returns two soldiers, one body

Bangladesh repatriated two injured Indian soldiers and the body of another who was among 16 soldiers killed during fighting over a disputed frontier area last wek. An officer of the Bangladesh Rifles, the country's border police, handed over the body and the two injured soldiers to officials of India's Border Security Force at the frontier post of Mahendraganj.

"The injured men are in a bad shape," V.K. Gaur, Inspector General of the BSF, said on telephone from the northeastern city of Shillong. He said they hadn't received proper medical care.
Earlier yesterday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met with his Cabinet colleagues in the national capital, New Delhi, to take stock of the situation resulting from the deaths of the 16 soldiers. Fifteen decomposed bodies were returned to India on Friday. Eight of them were mutilated and bore torture marks.

"It was a brutal act of murder," Home Secretary Kamal Pandey told journalists after the Cabinet meeting. The soldiers were killed on Monday when Indian troops crossed the Assam frontier into Kurigram district, 240 kilometres north of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital, and attacked two border posts. The assault was apparently in retaliation for the occupation of a disputed frontier village by soldiers of the Bangladesh Rifles.

Bangladesh has called the deaths "unfortunate" and has assured New Delhi that there will be no repetition of such incidents. "We are committed to stopping recurrence of such unfortunate incidents along the border," Bangladesh's Home Minister Mohammed Nasim told the official Bangladesh Sangbad Sanghta news agency.

Border disputes have occurred often over the years, but a high death toll is rare. Sections of the border have been in dispute since the British carved up the subcontinent in 1947, creating India and Pakistan. The eastern portion of Pakistan later became Bangladesh. BSF chief Gurbachan Bhagat returned from the frontier Sunday and briefed the Cabinet ministers and other top security officials about the situation along the 4,000- kilometre border that India shares with Bangladesh.

Pandey described the attack as a unilateral action by Bangladesh Rifles soldiers. He cleared the Bangladesh government of any blame, saying Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government was not aware of the attack.

Meanwhile, the guns have fallen silent along the border, but Pyrdiwah, the village in the eye of the storm, lay in ruins yesterday. "I have nothing left, just this shirt and the trousers that I am wearing," said Piju Nongrum. "The Bangladeshis looted everything we had, including our children's school books." The 48-year-old village headman stood with his wife in front of their house, surveying the devastation in the hamlet of nearly 500 people.

Pyrdiwah was the scene of a tense four-day standoff between India and Bangladesh following the occupation of the disputed village by Bangladeshi border police. Pyrdiwah, vacated on Thursday by Bangladeshi frontier guards after a five-day siege, is in ruins. The cross in the village church is missing, the tin roofs of the bamboo and mud-walled houses are gone, cattle have disappeared and what remains of the cooking utensils are but twisted metal.