Bangladesh Border Guards (BGB) opened fire at a Border Security Force (BSF) team on Thursday killing a jawan after a ‘flag meeting’ along the Indo-Bangla riverine frontier in West Bengal, officials said. A second jawan was injured in the firing incident.

The action against the Indian personnel sparked tension between the two sides which led BSF chief, V K Johri, to call up his counterpart Major General Shafeenul Islam over the hotline, an official said. 

However, in a statement issued late in the night, in Dhaka, the BGB said they fired the gunshots in “self-defence”. The BGB Director General assured Johri a thorough probe into the incident.

The BGB said their patrol team tried to detain three Indian fishermen who had entered into Bangladesh, but two of them managed to flee. Soon, four-armed BSF men, including one in uniform came 650 yards inside Bangladesh’s territory with a speedboat to take away the detained fisherman. 

In line with the regular practice, the BGB team told the BSF personnel that the issue could be settled through a flag meeting and also told them that since they intruded into Bangladesh’s territory as well, they would be handed over to the authorities after the meeting. 

“The BSF men then turned furious and opened gunfire and started going back to their (Indian) territory,” a statement from Bangladesh authorities said.  “The BGB patrol team fired gunshots in self-defence amid gunfire by the BSF men,” the statement added.

The jawan killed in the shooting was identified as head constable Vijay Bhan Singh, who hailed from Chamaroli village in Uttar Pradesh. The 51-year-old soldier is survived by his wife and two sons.

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