Troops of Potiram 172 BSF Battalion brought 15 Bangla-speaking Indian Muslims, including women and children, to the zero line near village Uchna to push them into Bangladesh territory at gunpoint yesterday afternoon.

As the victims raised an alarm, patrolling BDR jawans and frontier villagers rushed to the area and put up resistance. The BSF than had no alternative to taking them back to the India.

After the incident, Dinajpur Sector Commander of BDR Colonel Kazi Kaiser Uddin asked all his battalions to intensify patrol along the border to foil such push-in attempts, the sources said.

According to information trickling in from across the border, BSF was assembling an unknown number of similar Indian nationals on the other side of the porous border to push them into Bangladesh.

BSF always tries to push the Indian Muslims into Bangladesh every year during the Ramadan.

To thwart any such attempts, BDR is conducting alerted patrol along the 1,400-km common border from Kurigram to Rajshahi, the sources said.