The Border Security Force (BSF) on Friday wrote to the Union government expressing its concern after theft of close-circuit camera batteries and cables connecting the gadgets to the agency’s surveillance control rooms were detected stolen.
In its letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the BSF said the act of targeting security gadgets, which were installed along the India-Bangladesh border in Malda, Nadia and Murshidabad districts, was not a simple case of theft; it was aimed to infiltrate India only, said sources in the central agency responsible for guarding the country’s borders.
“We suspect carrying out subversive activities by sneaking into India could be the actual motive behind targeting the gadgets to defunct our electronic surveillance system. This is a serious matter in the backdrop of the ongoing unrest in Bangladesh,” said a BSF official.
According to BSF, batteries of 15 night-vision enabled CCTV cameras and cables connecting to the control rooms were stolen.
“We found 3,500-meter cable missing in these three districts which share many areas with a porous border between India and Bangladesh. These cameras were installed after the change in Bangladesh’s politics as we suspected a rise in infiltration from the neighbouring country. Our men were assigned to keep a watch on the computer screens in the control rooms connected to the wired CCTVs,” said the official quoting the contents of the letter to the Centre.
The central Intelligence Bureau (IB), too, alerted the MHA about the incident.
“Operatives of a Bangladesh-based terrorist outfit visiting Bengal came to light after the arrests of a dozen of suspects, including a Bangladeshi national, during a massive crackdown launched by the Special Task Force (STF), Assam. The suspects were working for the outfit’s sleeper cell in India. We came to know that the suspects preferred to sneak into India through the south Bengal border even when they were heading to the northeast states of our country,” said an IB officer.
The arrested suspects have been identified as operatives of Ansal-Al-Islami, also known as Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which is known for its ties with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
The officer said the suspects took advantage of dense winter fog to commit the crime.
“The work of laying the cables and changing the cameras has been started. We have deployed our men along the stretches where the incident took place. We have also asked the MHA to put other security agencies and the Bengal government on high alert,” said another BSF officer.
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