New Delhi: Border Security Force officials told The Hindu that public representatives were authorised to issue “passes” for local residents crossing the India-Bangladesh border – a day after Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra posted examples of such passes, alleging that Union minister Shantanu Thakur had allowed “smugglers” to transport beef across the border. The MP, however, has claimed that Thakur’s representatives charge money to issue such slips and that the BSF is not right in claiming that this is standard procedure.
Sharing the image of one such pass, Moitra had written on X on July 8 that Thakur had printed forms on his official letterhead, addressed to the Commandant of BSF’s 85-Battalion, “issuing “passes” for smugglers on Indo-Bangla border.”
“In this case for allowing 3 kgs of beef,” she wrote, tagging the Union home ministry and “Gau Rakshak Senas [and] Godi Media.”
Beef and its transportation is the bedrock of several attacks on minority communities by self-appointed “gau rakshaks” or cow protectors who operate under the aegis of Hindutva groups. With several BJP-ruled states passing anti-cow slaughter laws, Muslims and Dalit people are lynched from time to time on suspicion that they may be carrying beef.
In Bengal, the consumption of beef is not illegal.
A senior BSF official told The Hindu on condition of anonymity that eight TMC councillors at Hakimpur in the Swarupnagar area of North 24 Parganas, which Moitra mentioned in her post on X, issue 80 such passes every day, requesting the BSF to let the residents carry beef.
The area falls in the Bongaon parliamentary constituency, which is represented by Thakur in Lok Sabha, the official told the newspaper.
Panchayat and ward members, councillors, and MPs are among those who routinely issue such passes and trade permits in a system that was “devised two decades ago,” he said.
The BSF, tasked with bringing smuggling to the books, frisks locals who cross the border. “The passes are issued so that a person who has purchased beef or any other item from the market and is going home is not inconvenienced as BSF guards the border gates,” the official said.
“Such regulation is done so that people can take commodities or items of their use in limited quantity only and not dare to use for smuggling purposes,” a senior BSF officer of South Bengal Frontier told The Telegraph.
It is unclear how the BSF determines the intention of those who carry items across the border, i.e. whether they are for smuggling or otherwise.
The report mentions that carrying essential commodities is controlled and regulated by BSF on the recommendation issued by local panchayat members, mostly representatives of TMC.
In a press conference, Thakur said that since most of the gram panchayat bodies are controlled by TMC, “its members don’t issue such recommendations to the political rivals.”
“So I issued a recommendation letter, which is not pass to smugglers,” he said.
On July 9, sharing a video originally posted on X by TMC leader Nilanjan Das, MP Moitra said that “Minister [Thakur] is taking Rs 200 per slip from beef transporters.”
In the video, a beef transporter named Jiyarul Gazi is purportedly heard claiming that Thakur’s representative took Rs 200 from him in exchange for a permission slip allowing him to take 3 kilos of beef.