Pakistani Mortar Shell Discovered Near India-Bangladesh Border in Cooch Behar, West Bengal
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Kolkata, Dec 18 (NationPress) Tension escalated in a village close to the India-Bangladesh border in the Dinhata subdivision of West Bengal's Cooch Behar district on Wednesday after some construction workers unearthed a Pakistani mortar shell while digging.
Initially, one of the construction workers mistook the shell for a regular explosive, leading to a state of panic.
The local police and the Border Security Force (BSF) were alerted.
A team from the BSF quickly arrived at the scene and, after inspecting the object, confirmed it to be a Pakistani mortar shell. The BSF personnel promptly deactivated it, providing reassurance to the local residents.
Dinhata Sub-Divisional Police Officer, Dhiman Mitra, stated that the construction workers stumbled upon the shell while performing digging tasks for construction.
"The BSF personnel later deactivated it. There is no reason for alarm," he remarked.
However, police sources indicated that while the discovery of mortar shells is not unusual in that vicinity, which is in close proximity to the international border where a BSF unit is stationed, "the concern lies in how a Pakistani mortar shell ended up in that location and was subsequently buried underground."
"It remains unclear who transported the shell there and for what purpose," noted a state police official.
Intelligence and security agencies have already intensified surveillance and other necessary security protocols in villages neighboring the state's international borders, both land and coastal, due to fears of increased illegal infiltration from the neighboring country amid the ongoing crisis situation.
Agencies are on heightened alert following reports of a surge in outsiders taking residence in many border-adjacent villages. There are intelligence reports concerning activists from the Bangladesh-based fundamentalist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HUT) attempting to establish sleeper cells in these border villages.
