A Bangladeshi man, Khademul Haque, 25, was shot dead by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) early on May 14 at the Amjhol border in Hatibandha upazila of Lalmonirhat. Earlier, on 8 May, two Bangladeshis were killed and several others injured in BSF firing along the Pathariadwar border in Kasba upazila of Brahmanbaria. These were not exceptional incidents, but simply the latest additions to the seemingly never-ending procession of deaths along the Bangladesh–India border.

According to Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), 34 Bangladeshis were killed by the BSF in 2025 — 24 in firing incidents and 10 following physical torture. The figures were 30 in 2024, 31 in 2023, 23 in 2022, and 18 in 2021. In the first four months of 2026 alone, at least four more names had already been added to the list before last week’s killings occurred.

ASK data further shows that between 2014 and February this year, the BSF shot and killed 285 Bangladeshi civilians, averaging nearly 24 deaths annually. The toll peaked in 2020, when 42 people were killed — the highest annual figure recorded.

An analysis by Netra News and the Bangladesh Protest Archive also found that at least 27 Bangladeshi minors were killed by the BSF between 2009 and 2025, including six in 2024 alone.

New governments, same old story

The BNP government under Prime Minister Tarique Rahman came to power promising a break from the previous governments’ — particularly the Awami League’s — era of passive absorption.

When it was in opposition, the BNP described this border as the most violent in the world, called the killings deliberate, and demanded a UN investigation. It said the Awami League’s permanent political settlement with Delhi was why the killings went unaddressed.

Former BSF director general Prakash Singh called the plan “silly,” warning that crocodiles and snakes cannot distinguish between Bangladeshis and Indians living near the zero line. That this proposal is being seriously discussed — and circulated in writing to field units — says something precise about the ideological trajectory of India’s border management. It has moved from shoot-on-sight, which required a human finger on a trigger and produced at least a paper trail, to an aspiration for a border that kills automatically, without accountability and without record.

The BNP’s 2026 election manifesto explicitly vowed to take “a strict position” to stop “border killings, push-ins, and smuggling.” But since the BNP formally assumed office, there has been no sign of border killings being stopped.

Clearly, the BSF does not adjust its behaviour based on who is in power in Dhaka. It adjusts based on whether there are consequences. And there have never been consequences: not a single BSF personnel member has ever been prosecuted for a killing at this border. The only case that reached trial — that of Amiya Ghosh, accused in Felani Khatun’s killing — ended in acquittal.

What makes the current moment distinctly more dangerous than any that came before is not anything the BNP has done or failed to do. It is what has happened on the other side of the fence.

The BJP won the West Bengal Assembly elections, securing 207 of 294 seats and ending 15 years of Trinamool Congress rule.

Its victory was driven significantly by a narrative around Bangladesh, illegal migration, and demographic change — a narrative that has now moved from campaign rhetoric into governance.

Combined with the BJP’s continued dominance in Assam and Tripura, as well as its influence across India’s eastern border states, this marks an unprecedented concentration of Hindu-nationalist political power along Bangladesh’s western and northeastern frontiers.

This matters not because the BJP invented BSF killings — it did not. The killings happened even under Congress-led UPA governments that presented themselves as champions of regional cooperation.

As illegal immigration from Bangladesh became a political issue in India through the 1980s, New Delhi began work on a border fence in 1989 and beefed-up security along the frontier. From that point on, the killing of Bangladeshi civilians at the hands of the BSF became a regular occurrence.

Around 1,000 Bangladeshis were killed by the BSF in the single decade between 2001 and 2010 — spanning the final years of the Vajpayee government and the early phase of the second term of Manmohan Singh’s UPA administration, according to Odhikar, as cited by Human Rights Watch.

Under the BJP government as well, such border killings have largely continued as part of an established and persistent pattern.

But what has changed is the political mandate. Under Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal at least had a government uncomfortable with anti-Bangladeshi rhetoric, which occasionally pushed back against Delhi’s hardest positions and shared cultural and linguistic solidarity with Bengali communities on both sides of the fence.

That government is gone. The political space for Bengali solidarity within West Bengal’s governance has contracted to near zero.

The BJP’s ideological project in West Bengal is precisely the decoupling of Bengali cultural identity from any solidarity with Muslim Bengalis across the border. It is converting a shared language into a threat. Every unfenced kilometre is now a political liability for the new state government. Every deportation is a campaign promise fulfilled.

Clearly, the BSF does not adjust its behaviour based on who is in power in Dhaka. It adjusts based on whether there are consequences. And there have never been consequences: not a single BSF personnel member has ever been prosecuted for a killing at this border. The only case that reached trial — that of Amiya Ghosh, accused in Felani Khatun’s killing — ended in acquittal.

The push-in dimension

The killings and the push-ins are not separate phenomena. They are different expressions of the same ideological project.

Between May 7 last year and January 26 this year, the BGB recorded 2,479 people pushed into Bangladesh from India through border points in 32 districts. Of them, at least 120 were identified as Indians.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has acknowledged that his government, along with the BSF, carried out “push-backs” of suspected migrants into Bangladesh — without tribunal involvement. Dhaka formally protested, summoning the Indian envoy.

With West Bengal now also under BJP rule, Dhaka fears similar operations could expand significantly. Union Home Minister Amit Shah had made infiltration a central issue in West Bengal election rallies, and BJP leaders repeatedly demanded stricter action against what they described as illegal immigrants in border districts.

At a press briefing on May 7, India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randheer Jaiswal reiterated that “all illegal foreign nationals staying in India must be repatriated as per our laws, procedure and established bilateral arrangements,” adding that 2,862 cases of nationality verification remain pending with Bangladesh.

The language is bureaucratic. The practice on the ground — people being pushed across in darkness, with floodlights switched off at the moment of crossing — is not.

The push-ins are not law enforcement. They are an ideological project dressed in security language. And they are happening alongside, not instead of, the shootings.

The fence

The fence sits at the centre of this escalation. Of the 4,096.7-kilometre border, 3,232 kilometres have already been fenced. Bangladesh objects that India’s construction violates the 1975 Joint India-Bangladesh guidelines prohibiting defensive structures within 150 yards of the border, while India does not regard wired fences as defensive infrastructure — a definitional disagreement that has never been adjudicated.

Fencing work along unfenced sections was temporarily suspended in January 2025 following a confrontation between the BSF and the BGB in Malda district. That suspension ended the moment the political context changed.

The new West Bengal government’s first Cabinet meeting approved the transfer of approximately 600 acres of land to the BSF for completing border fencing, with Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari announcing that the handover would be completed within 45 days.

Under Mamata Banerjee, land acquisition for the fence stalled for years because of her political ambivalence. Under the BJP, the fence is not a federal imposition on a reluctant state. It is the state government’s own first act.

But even fencing is not enough for India’s current border imagination. An internal BSF communique dated March 26, 2026 directed field units along the India-Bangladesh border to assess the feasibility of deploying reptiles such as snakes and crocodiles in vulnerable riverine gaps where fencing has proved impossible, noting that the proposal is “in line with Home Minister Amit Shah’s directions.”

Former BSF director general Prakash Singh called the plan “silly,” warning that crocodiles and snakes cannot distinguish between Bangladeshis and Indians living near the zero line.

That this proposal is being seriously discussed — and circulated in writing to field units — says something precise about the ideological trajectory of India’s border management. It has moved from shoot-on-sight, which required a human finger on a trigger and produced at least a paper trail, to an aspiration for a border that kills automatically, without accountability and without record.

The push-ins are not law enforcement. They are an ideological project dressed in security language. And they are happening alongside, not instead of, the shootings.

Dhaka’s response: firmer words, intensified ground posture

Bangladesh is not silent, though the question remains whether words will translate into action. Prime Minister’s Foreign Affairs Adviser M Humayun Kabir has adopted a notably firm tone. “Bangladesh is not afraid of barbed wire,” he told reporters recently.

Responding to West Bengal’s land transfer announcement, Kabir warned that the situation along the frontier “would no longer remain as it was in the past” and that “Bangladesh also has its own plans.” Crucially, he added: “The border we saw during Sheikh Hasina’s time will never be the same again.”

Earlier, on March 1, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pranay Verma that Bangladesh does not want to see further killings along the border.

Emphasising the continued engagement between the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and the Border Security Force (BSF), he said many outstanding issues could be resolved through dialogue.

On the ground too, the BGB has significantly escalated its posture — and the scale of that escalation is worth detailing. The home minister publicly confirmed that the BGB has been placed on its highest alert along the border with India since the West Bengal elections, with fresh directives issued to district authorities in border regions.

In the strategically important Benapole sector, strict security measures have been enforced across nearly 102 kilometres of border areas under the jurisdiction of Jessore-49 BGB and Khulna-21 BGB since 7 May, with additional personnel deployed at multiple border points, including Raghunathpur, Shikarpur, Sadipur, Ghiba, Putkhali, Goga, Daulatpur, and Rudrapur. Authorities have also warned people against unnecessary movement near border areas, particularly at night.

Similar high-alert measures have been activated in Chapainawabganj, where BGB commanders have said they are maintaining strict vigilance to prevent the BSF from pushing anyone illegally into Bangladesh. The BGB has also stepped-up security along approximately 558 kilometres of border spanning Lalmonirhat and Kurigram — two districts that have borne a disproportionate share of border killings and push-ins.

Across the border as a whole, the BGB has been deploying radar systems, thermal imaging cameras, high-speed boats, and drone surveillance to strengthen monitoring in remote riverine regions, dense forests, and the Sundarbans — reinforcing round-the-clock observation in sensitive areas.

These are meaningful steps. But they address the symptom — illegal crossings and push-ins — not the disease, which is the killing of people who cross.

What needs to change

If the BNP government is serious in a way its predecessors were not, it has a brief window — before the BJP’s new border politics hardens into permanent infrastructure, permanent impunity, and permanent narrative — to act.

First, Bangladesh must internationalise the issue more aggressively. Routine protest notes to the Indian High Commission disappear without consequence. Dhaka should escalate by submitting detailed cases to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, engaging with the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review process, and considering an International Criminal Court referral. Even if such steps do not produce immediate legal outcomes, they raise the diplomatic and political cost of silence in ways bilateral notes never can.

Second, accountability mechanisms for border killings need to be institutionalised in writing. Legal scholars have specifically recommended that India and Bangladesh jointly form an independent commission to investigate BSF human rights violations, operating impartially with witness protection.

Border management researchers have further proposed that both sides create independent inquiries into every fatal incident, releasing public summaries on a fixed timeline — making the unit of accountability the event, not the institution.

Bangladesh should table this formally at every DG-level meeting and insist that it be included in the minutes. India will resist. Its resistance, on record, is itself a diplomatic instrument.

Third, Bangladesh should press for changes in BSF deployment and composition along the border. BSF units along this border are overwhelmingly drawn from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan — personnel with no linguistic or cultural connection to the communities they police. The dehumanisation that makes casual killing psychologically possible is partly produced by that distance.

Bangladesh should demand in writing, at every DG-level meeting, that BSF units include substantial numbers of Bangla-speaking personnel from West Bengal and Assam. Even if India refuses, a documented refusal is worth more than an oral assurance.

Fourth, formalising legal cross-border trade should be treated as a security strategy, not just an economic one. A 2018 World Bank report found that border haats reduced informal trading, with analysts noting that legal income opportunities directly lower the risk of people turning to illegal trade — and being killed for it. The new haats already under discussion should be accelerated and framed as a border security measure, while the currently closed haats also need to be reopened.

Beyond haats, researchers have argued that India’s ban on cattle exports to Bangladesh is itself a structural driver of the killings, and that legalising the trade would remove the single largest offence category the BSF uses to justify lethal force. Bangladesh should make this a standing agenda item in bilateral economic talks, linked explicitly to the killings file.

Finally, domestic enforcement failures cannot be ignored. The smuggling networks the BSF uses to justify its killings operate on both sides of the zero line — local law enforcement personnel and politicians are often embedded in the same chains whose lowest-level members end up being shot. A government serious about border killings must be equally serious about holding these actors accountable.

At the same time, the economic marginalisation of districts like Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Chuadanga, and Chapainawabganj must be treated as a structural driver of risk, not a background detail.

Until the border is governed by consequences instead of silence, the deaths will keep arriving as routine.

Jannatul Naym Pieal is a Dhaka-based writer, researcher and journalist. He can be reached at [email protected].

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