The BSF on Wednesday foiled an attempt by around 500 Bangladeshis, mostly Hindus, to enter India through the unfenced border in the Jalpaiguri district.

This is the first time after the downfall of the Sheikh Hasina government in Dhaka that Bangladeshis have tried to infiltrate India through the porous border in Bengal.

Hundreds of people, mostly Hindus, gathered in villages like Churakathi, Baniapara and Bonogram in the Panchagarh district of Bangladesh because of the breakdown of law and order in the neighbouring nation.

On the Indian side of the border are Kajaldighi and Paranigram in the Jalpaiguri district. Only border pillars mark the territories of the two countries.

On Wednesday morning, the Bangladeshi residents gathered near the zero point with a plan to enter India. The zero point is around 40km from Jalpaiguri town.

“Considering the present situation, we cannot afford to stay at our places. We have spent sleepless nights and reached border villages in the Panchagarh district to enter India. The BSF has stopped us and we don’t know where to go,” said Suresh Adhikari, a Bangladeshi resident.

The Jalpaiguri Sadar block has four villages — Naotor-Debottar, Paranigram, Boroshoshi and Kajaldighi – which were known to be in “adverse possession.”

“This is because, in 1947, these villages remained in the Indian territory but were marked on the map of the then East Pakistan and later, Bangladesh. When the land boundary agreement was signed between India and Bangladesh in 2015, the villages were formally marked on the Indian map and removed from the Bangladesh map,” said Nripati Bhusan Roy, a retired school teacher of Dakshin Berubari, an adjacent locality.

Both the countries later conducted a joint land survey to mark their territories and border pillars were erected to separate the two nations.

“However, fences are yet to be erected along the border in these villages. The Bangladeshis today tried to cross the unfenced border and enter India,” Roy said.

Sources said over 2,000 Bangladeshis, mostly Hindus, had assembled in the Bangladeshi villages, which are close to the four Indian villages.

When a section of them reached the zero point on Wednesday morning, BSF troops arrived and asked them to return. However, the Bangladeshis insisted that they be provided with shelter in India.

“How can we go back? Hooligans are attacking us and vandalising and torching our homes. We have no other alternative,” said Palen Roy, a Bangladeshi.

More BSF personnel arrived and the Bangladeshis refused to relent. Some of the Bangladeshi nationals were seen sitting at the zero point on Wednesday evening also, sources said.

The residents of the Indian villages sounded perturbed.

“There is no fencing here. We are apprehensive that anybody might sneak into our villages from Bangladesh. Surprisingly, we didn’t find any personnel of the BGB (Border Guard Bangladesh) on the other side who should have prevented those people from reaching the zero point,” said a resident of Kajaldighi. He added that the villagers were sharing information about any suspicious movement across the frontier with the BSF and police.

Jalpaiguri district magistrate Shama Parveen said: “The BSF is guarding the border. The local police are also monitoring the situation.”

Sources in the north Bengal frontier of the BSF, which guards around 930km of the India-Bangla border in five districts, said 18 battalions were deployed along the frontier.

“A high alert has been issued along the entire border. Surveillance has also been beefed up at the land customs stations,” said a source.

BSF officers on Wednesday held a meeting with residents of Jaridharla and Doribos, two villages in the Dinhata subdivision of the Cooch Behar district and close to the border.

“The villages are separated from the rest of the district by the Dharala river. The boundary is not fenced and there is always a chance that people from Bangladesh will infiltrate into these villages. We asked the villagers to be alert and inform us if they watch something unusual near the border,” said a source in the BSF.

Additional reporting by our Cooch Behar correspondent