An alleged Bangladeshi smuggler died after the BSF reportedly fired pellets at him at a village near the India-Bangladesh border on Friday evening while a group was apparently trying to smuggle cough syrups to Bangladesh.

Sources said around 6pm, BSF troops posted in Hilli border outpost of South Dinajpur district spotted a person running towards Kundupara, a bordering village in Hilli, from the international border.

When security personnel asked him to stop, he ran, climbed a wall and jumped into the premises of an abandoned rice mill.

As BSF team start searching for him. Suddenly, a group of five-six people, armed with bamboo sticks and sharp weapons, reportedly attacked the BSF team.

“They were hiding in bushes and attacked the BSF. As they tried to overpower the security men, the latter fired one round in the air to disperse them,” said a source.

Reportedly, the smugglers continued their attack which made the BSF fire pellets at them and the pellets hit one of the men in the group while the others fled toward Bangladesh.

The BSF personnel, who were also injured, lifted the man and took him to the primary health centre in Hilli where doctors pronounced him dead.

The BSF recovered 79 bottles of cough syrups, 10 strips of sedative tablets as well as sticks and sharp weapons from the site, as well as some Bangladeshi Taka and a cell phone.

A preliminary BSF probe found that a gang of “Bangladeshi smugglers” had infiltrated Kundupara village to collect the goods to smuggle to Bangladesh.

The deceased Sahabul Hossain, 24, is from Dinajpur district of the neighbouring country. It isn’t clear if Sahabul was the person whom the BSF spotted first.

Arrest

A team of the 15th battalion of the BSF deployed at the India-Bangladesh border in Jalpaiguri district nabbed Jahangir, a 34-year-old Bangladeshi resident from Thakurgaon district, on Friday night.

Jahangir was illegally trying to walk into Bangladesh from India. He was later handed over to Kotwali police station. Probe is on.