In Tripura, BJP protests attacks on minorities in Bangladesh

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will continue to organise protests until the attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh are stopped, party leaders said in the Tripura capital Thursday.

"We held a demonstration here Friday to protest the attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh. Such a stir would continue until the attacks on minorities are stopped," BJP's Tripura unit president Sudhindra Dasgupta told reporters.

He said the government of India must talk with the Bangladesh government and urge it to take suitable measures to stop the attacks on the minorities and to prevent these in future.

The members of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the BJP, Wednesday organised a demonstration in front of the Bangladesh diplomatic mission in Agartala.

Police arrested 24 BJYM members, including the party's state leaders Pulak Kumar Debnath and Tapas Majumder, and later released them on bail.

A police picket has been set up at the Bangladesh mission office on the outskirts of the city.

According to media reports in Bangladesh, over 200 houses and shops belonging to the minority Hindu community have been vandalised and looted by the Jamaat-e-Islami activists in various parts of Bangladesh's Jessore and Dinajpur districts. The attacks took place before and during the Jan 5 parliamentary polls in that country.

"Several hundred minority people, including women and children, have taken shelter in Hindu temples and safer places. Bangladesh security forces have arrested many attackers," the reports said.

India has stepped up vigil along its border with Bangladesh in view of the ongoing political turmoil and attacks on religious minorities in the neighbouring country.

"We have asked our personnel to further tighten vigil along the India-Bangladesh border. Additional forces have been deployed in the sensitive border locations...," an officer of the Border Security Force (BSF) told IANS.

"Though we do not have any kind of specific intelligence inputs of troubles opposite to Tripura, Assam, Mizoram and Meghalaya frontiers, there are troubles and incidents of attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh territories opposite to West Bengal borders," said the official, who refused to be named.

Five Indian states - West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram - share a 4,096-km border with Bangladesh. A large portion of the International Border remains unfenced and porous.