New Delhi: Bangladesh is emerging as a bigger threat to India's national security than Pakistan, the Director General of BSF R S Mooshahary said on Wednesday.
BSF guards the 4,000-km-odd Indo-Bangla border and is also present along the LoC in the Indo-Pak border with the Army.
"Bangladesh will soon pose a bigger problem than Pakistan," Mooshahary said, adding that the porus Indo-Bangla border is more difficult to man than the Indo-Pak border.
"At the Pakistan border, both the Army and BSF are deployed, whereas the Indo-Bangla border is manned solely by BSF."
He also admitted that illegal migration into the North-East is a continuing concern and in order to address the issue of infiltration, BSF has sought to raise an additional battalion of women.
"I've sought the Home Ministry's permission to raise a women's battalion to deal with infiltrators, many of whom are women," he said.
India is sure that there are about 172 terror camps operating in Bangladesh and that 307 "wanted-people," including top ULFA leaders Paresh Baruah and Arvind Rajkhowa, are in Bangladesh, he said, adding that "Dhaka has denied their presence without verifying the details given to them."
When asked about repeated provocative actions by Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), including the killing of some BSF officers, he disagreed that the Indian border force was "soft" and said it had to behave "responsibly."
"We cannot always work by the eye-for-an-eye principle.They (BDR) will not repeat this behaviour. If they do, they are aware of the consequences," Mooshahary said referring to the killing of assistant commandant Jeevan Kumar earlier this year.
Kumar was killed after he crossed the Bangladesh border to rescue a kidnapped Indian.
Mooshahary describing his killing as a "cold blooded murder" and said Dhaka had agreed to conduct an inquiry after New Delhi had demanded it.
"But it (the inquiry) served their own interests and we were not involved," he said.
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