Tripura police link Ashabari BSF attack to anti-smuggling drive

Intensified anti-smuggling work along the India-Bangladesh border is the main reason behind the 2 November attack on a Border Security Force team at Ashabari in Tripura's Sepahijala district, a senior police officer said on Sunday.

Sepahijala Superintendent of Police Bijoy Debbarma told PTI that joint teams of the police, the Tripura State Rifles and the BSF have destroyed at least 1.5 crore ganja plants in the Sonamura subdivision over the past year. He put the loss to illegal operators at an estimated Rs 1,000 crore. Agencies have also seized smuggled goods worth several crores of rupees in that period, he said.

"The security agencies have intensified anti-smuggling operations in the border areas, which has angered people involved in the illegal trade," Debbarma said, according to the PTI report carried by ThePrint and India Today NE.

The 2 November attack

Debbarma said BSF personnel intercepted an alleged smuggling attempt along the international border at Ashabari on 2 November. The force then came under attack. Three personnel, including an assistant commandant, were injured.

He attributed the violence to the losses suffered by smuggling syndicates after the crackdown. Police have arrested 21 people, including two people described as key suspects, in connection with the attack, and a detailed investigation is under way, he said.

NEInsider earlier reported the clash and the later arrests that took the number in custody to 21, among them a woman named as a prime accused, her son and one more person taken into custody this week. Sunday's briefing is the first detailed official account of a motive. The superintendent did not name the accused in the remarks carried by PTI.

A fenced border that is still used

Sepahijala shares about 99 kilometres of boundary with Bangladesh, and nearly 99 per cent of it is fenced, Debbarma said. Even so, he said smugglers still find ways to move cattle, clothes, medicines, essential commodities and contraband across the line.

Around 300 families continue to live outside the barbed-wire fence along the international boundary. Under the India-Bangladesh agreement, permanent structures cannot be built within 150 yards of the zero line, which leaves those households on the far side of the fencing. Debbarma said that arrangement gives smugglers an opportunity to operate.

The figures he cited — 1.5 crore plants destroyed and an estimated Rs 1,000 crore loss — refer to enforcement across the Sonamura subdivision over the past year, not to a single seizure on the day of the attack. The PTI report does not say how those destroyed crops or earlier seizures are linked to any of the people now in custody. Those questions remain part of the investigation.

Ashabari, also reported earlier as lying under Kalamchoura police station in the Boxanagar area, sits on a stretch of the frontier that has seen repeated smuggling cases. Sunday's comments place the November assault in that longer enforcement campaign rather than treating it as an isolated clash.