New Delhi: Border Security Force (BSF) has suspended seven of its troops posted along the Indo-Bangla frontier, including an officer, after ordering a Staff Court of Inquiry into the killing of a Bangladeshi national suspected to be part of a group of cross-border gold smugglers, last week.
Officials said the incident took place on May 14 at about 10 am along the Banpur border post in Krishnanagar district of West Bengal when a group of suspected smugglers surrounded a Border Security force patrol and the force party subsequently fired from a non-lethal gun to disperse them.
Later, they said, a teenager who received the gun shot from the pump action gun succumbed to injuries on the other side of the border.
"The Staff Court of Inquiry will go into the details of the incident. The seven personnel including an Assistant Commandant of the 113th battalion have been placed under suspension pending inquiry," a senior official said.
He said the BSF patrol was acting on an intelligence input to intercept cross-border smugglers.
The incident comes at a time when a high-level delegation of the Border Security Force, led by its Director General KK Sharma, is in Dhaka for the annual border talks with their counterparts Border Guard Bangladesh.
