SILCHAR: Border Security Force personnel have seized a huge quantity of medicine, acting on a tip-off of the BSF intelligence wing, while the consignment was being smuggled out to Bangladesh on Tuesday night.
The medicines were meant for free supply to the government primary health centers in Assam and they were not for sale. In a separate incident, the customs department and BSF seized 11 cows from a truck in the same border area while the animals were being smuggled to the neighbouring country.
Sources said, acting on a tip-off, personnel of 115 battalion of BSF under Mizoram and Cachar Frontier rushed to the Indo-Bangla border in Lafasail near Karimganj at 11.45 pm on Tuesday and seized 245 bottles of allopathic medicines and a huge quantity of tablets from near the border fencing. The smugglers fled the spot taking advantage of the darkness, sources said.
Although there is a barbed fence in this part of the border, smugglers from both sides of the border smuggle goods, packed in small boxes, by throwing over the fence to the other side.
The sources said the medicines were meant for primary health centers in Assam for free supply to patients. Search is on for culprits involved in the incident with the help of police, said an officer on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, officials of the customs department with the help of the Kathaltoli-based BSF in Karimganj district seized a truck loaded with cattle, which were being smuggled to Bangladesh through Hatikhira Tea Estate, a place near Assam-Tripura border. No arrests have been made in this connection as the smugglers managed to flee from the spot. There's no fence in this part of the Indo-Bangladesh border.
Animals are regularly smuggled to Bangladesh from this part of Assam and Tripura. However, the report of smuggling of government medicines adds a new twist to the ongoing incidents of smuggling along the international border.
