More than 70,000 Bangladeshis missing since 2006:Home Ministry

New Delhi, Feb 4 (PTI) Indian Home Ministry is perturbed
over the continuous reports of overstaying and disappearance of Bangladeshis after their arrival in the country with more than 70,000 people travelling on valid documents still missing since 2006 in addition to illegal immigrants.

Home Ministry officials said on an average about 21,000
Bangladeshi nationals, who come with regular visas, either go
missing or have been overstaying every year in the country.

This is in addition to the scores of illegal immigrants
who regularly cross the porous Indo-Bangla border.

"For overstaying, we have deported 15,000 Bangladeshi
nationals in 2005, 12,000 Bangladeshis in 2006 and 11,500 in
2007," a Home Ministry official said.

In addition to that, 25,712 out of five lakh Bangladeshi
nationals who came to India, did not return after expiry of
their visas in 2007 while more than 24,000 remained missing in
2006 when 4.84 lakh had entered India with valid travel
documents.

Interestingly, the Border Security Force (BSF), which
guards the 4,095-km-long porous Indo-Bangla border, has
recently disclosed that 12 lakh Bangladeshis, who had entered
India between 1972 and 2005 with valid documents, have not
returned home.

The government has adopted a multi-pronged approach to
contain infiltration from Bangladesh which is posing serious
security threat as probe in almost all recent serial blasts in
different parts of the country has links to India's eastern
neighbour, the official said.

Last year, the BSF had intercepted 807 Bangladeshis
trying to illegally cross over to India but officials said the
actual infiltration is roughly estimated to be double the
numbers intercepted.

The figure was almost 10,000-12,000 till a few years
back.

Interestingly, the number of missing Bangladeshis --
62,547 between 2005-07 -- is much higher than the number of
Pakistanis -- 22,097 -- who had come to India using proper
visa and subsequently remained traceless.

While 7,404 Pakistanis did not return after expiry of
their visas in 2007, the figure was 7,650 in 2006 and 7,043 in
2005.

"The government is aware of the presence of illegal
Bangladeshi migrants in various parts of the country. Since,
they enter clandestinely and also mingle with the local
population quite easily due to ethnic, linguistic and cultural
similarities, exact and realistic estimates about their number
are not available," a top Home Ministry official said.

In Assam, between 1985 and 2007, only 1,547 illegal
Bangladeshi nationals were deported under the now scrapped
IMDT Act and 674 under the Foreigners Act.

Altogether 12,846 Bangladeshis were identified by the
IMDT tribunals until the Act was scrapped in 2005. Of these,
1,547 were deported, while there was no information about the
rest. PTI ACB