A patrolling team of the BSF’s 117 battalion seized 140kg hilsa, worth Rs 2.35 lakh, from smugglers in Murshidabad’s Bamnabad on Monday morning, said a BSF official.
According to the forces guarding the border with Bangladesh, they have, over the past two months, thwarted repeated attempts of hilsa being smuggled to Bengal, seizing some 1,000kg fish from various places under its South Bengal Frontier.
On Monday’s attempt, DIG (G) of BSF’s South Bengal Frontier S.S. Guleria said: “Our troops spotted an Indian farmer while examining his mechanised boat. They found fish hidden in the boat under jute plants.”
Market sources said attempts to smuggle hilsa into Bengal from Bangladesh increased on two counts — low yield of the fish in Bengal and embargo on the supply of the delicacy from the neighbouring country since 2012.
Earlier this month, around 800 trawlers had set out to catch hilsa in coastal Bengal in August but almost all returned empty. The gross amount of the catch has so far been around 25 per cent of the projected catch estimated during August. This has created a huge demand in markets and come as an opportunity for smugglers desperate to exploit the shortfall.
On August 5, the BSF had seized 126kg hilsa from Petrapole. On August 21, BSF seized 600kg of hilsa when smugglers were trying to push the consignment into Indian waters by packing them in polythene concealed inside bundles of jute.
Sources said the Bangladesh government in 2012 had banned the export of hilsa to India owing to “low availability” and for “price control” measures demanded by business associations in the neighbouring country.
Last year, an exception was made to the ban by the Sheikh Hasina government as a one-time Durga Puja gift. The Bangladesh government allowed an export of 500 tonne of the hilsa to India last year.
