Crocodiles and venomous snakes could soon be patrolling India’s border with Bangladesh (Image: Getty)
Crocodiles and venomous snakes could soon be patrolling India’s border with Bangladesh — deployed as a natural deterrent to stop people crossing illegally into the country.
An internal document circulated among field units of India’s Border Security Force asked commanders to examine whether the scheme could work in practice, according to reports in the local press. The creatures would serve as a “biological barrier” — nature recruited as a tool of border enforcement.
The document, which emerged in late March, was said to have been drawn up on the instructions of home minister Amit Shah.
Getting the frontier under control has occupied successive Indian governments for decades. Fencing of the 2,500-mile boundary began in 1986, with efforts intensifying under BJP rule from 2014. Even so, significant gaps remain across several north-eastern states.
Roughly 90 miles of the 530 miles that still lack any barrier are effectively unfenceable — the land is cut by river channels that move with the seasons, overflow their banks without warning and make fixed infrastructure impossible to maintain.
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A divisive frontier
The waterways involved are not minor streams, reports The Times. Fifty-four rivers weave across the boundary, a network that includes the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Kushiyara. Where fences have been built, time and weather have taken their toll — wire that was once secure has sagged, snapped or rusted through.
The border carries enormous historical weight. When Pakistani forces launched their campaign of mass killing in what was then East Pakistan in 1971, the resulting war sent approximately ten million people fleeing across into India. The conflict ended with Bangladesh’s independence, but the movement of people across the border never fully stopped.
Modi swept to power in 2014 partly on promises to tackle what his party framed as an existential threat. The BJP has consistently portrayed those crossing without authorisation as “infiltrators” intent on changing the country’s character — language that carries particular force in a nation where roughly one in five citizens is Muslim and the border runs alongside a country that is predominantly so.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of persecuting the country’s Muslim minority (Image: Getty)
Beyond the fence
The rhetoric hardened further after gunmen killed Hindu tourists in Kashmir last April in an attack attributed to Islamist militants. The BSF responded with a sharp increase in removals of Bengali Muslims, formally justified on immigration grounds.
The operation drew immediate criticism when it emerged that a substantial portion of those expelled held valid Indian citizenship and had been wrongly removed.
According to Human Rights Watch, upwards of 1,500 Muslims were pushed across the border in the weeks between early May and mid-June last year, with many subsequently brought back after documentation confirmed their status.
The reptile proposal is the latest addition to a security toolkit that already stretches well beyond wire and watchtowers, states the report. Surveillance drones now fly regular patrols, backed by infrared cameras capable of picking up movement in the dark. Specially trained dogs have been brought in to detect narcotics smuggled across by drone.
Whether the snakes and crocodiles will ultimately join them is another question entirely.
