STUDIO LEAD IN:

FILM BEGINS:

VO

India has announced that by next year it expects to finish building a new super fence along its border with Bangladesh.

GRAPHIC MAP

Over a thousand miles of fencing has been installed so far and India says the aim is to seal off the frontier to stop terrorists and criminals from coming across. The terror attacks on Mumbai last year have given new urgency to the project. 

But as our Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Rugman reports, Indian troops have shot dead hundreds of Bangladeshis and Indians near the fence - all in the name of national security.   

This is how Fortress India keeps her enemies out. A new fence along the Bangladeshi border currently  stretching for over a thousand miles . Its inspired by Israel's wall in the West Bank. And its manned by 80 000 Indian guards.

When its finished it will be as long as America's border with Mexico. Death can be the penalty for crossing it or even going near it  -  with hundreds of unarmed villagers killed 

along what is now one of the most dangerous frontiers in the world. 

This is the recruitment video of the Indian border Security Force or BSF. Fearless warriors fighting a Bollywood-style war against terror. But here along India's eastern border, the BSF is shooting civilians in the name of self-defence. 

Tease VOX 1

(SK Mitra, 

Former Inspector General, BSF , no Aston needed)

Surrender yourself, or otherwise the troops have no option left but to shoot them.

VO

Many of those confronting death are like this Bangladeshi family traveling with their 7 year old daughter for the past 3 days. Searching for a route out of poverty to the booming powerhouse of India beyond. Now India's fence is just ahead of them, only 150 yards away. But the field in front of them is also within Indian territory. And this smuggler warns them they are on the edge of a "no mans land" where anyone can be shot. So now they wait for nightfall before the desperate scramble across.      

But travel by motorbike into the remote Bangladeshi border villages and you find that its not just migrants risking death. In the three villages we visited, locals queued up with pictures of their relatives to show our camera  just how many had been shot. More than 60 dead so far this year - others scarred by bullets. Scores of villagers desperate to tell us they'd either been injured themselves or lost relatives to Indian border patrols.

Villager 1

“Just a few days ago, our villagers were cultivating land when the Indian border guards shot another farmer - killed in Bangladeshi territory!"

Villager 2

"We have lost sons and brothers and fathers. They shoot us over here, then they take the body onto the Indian side and say the body was a smuggler."

VO

India's fence  isn't due to be completed next year but its already striking terror into the hearts of ordinary people

Villager 3

"If any goats or cattle go to the fence, if anyone goes near the fence, we can be shot. Without doing anything wrong we can still be shot."

VO

The border was drawn up by the departing British in such haste that at points just an alleyway divides India from Bangladesh.

 People trafficking is rife here - these women crossing the Atrai river are destined for the sex trade and the backstreet brothels of  India's biggest cities. 

VO

Before the fence was built Bangladeshis crossed over  much more easily and millions of Muslims live on either side. Bangladesh needs Indian cows because it doesn't have enough cattle or grazing land to feed itself; and cross border cattle rustlers are apparently a favourite target for Indian guards - this 19 year old among those shot last month.

Cattle Rustler

Aston if needed– name of boy

Zaidul

"I was herding cattle with about 40 other people when the border guards shot me. There was no fence, it was open land. Nobody helped me. I escaped by crawling."

VO

At this Bangladeshi morgue, we were shown stacks of death certificates of those killed by Indian soldiers. The doctors told us the bodies are always handed back to their families. But nobody has even heard of Indian soldiers being prosecuted for any crime.      

The Indians man this legal border crossing, though you need a passport to use it, which most Bangladeshis can't afford.

An Indian officer told us the troops try to give a warning before they shoot, but our request for an official interview was turned down. And that may be because when you travel down the Indian side of the fence you find that the Indians have killed even more of their own villagers than they have Bangladeshis. 

In the village of Baliasisha, local Hindus crowded round us in scenes the mirror image of  muslim villages in Bangladesh.  Mothers grieving over sons. Men mourning their brothers, all shot by Indian patrols.     

Grieving Father

Aston: Tututl Shekh

"My son went to see his land one foggy morning around 4.30am, and that’s when they killed him from behind. Two bullets, one in the back and one in the head. I went to the police but they said they could not register any case against the border security force. My son was 19 years old." 

VO

There is an Indian charity investigating the killings. And its director says there's plenty of evidence that the BSF shoot and maim with complete impunity.  

ASTON 

Kirity Roy

National Project on Preventing Torture

So many murders have been taken out by the BSF. They killed Indian Citizens. But in not a single case, the perpetrator, BSF personnel has been convicted.

VO

The no man's land is peppered with Indian villages which are guarded like prisons. Soldiers fingerprinting their inhabitants before they are allowed into their homes across the fence . 

65000 Indians known locally as the "nowhere people". Break the nightime curfew here or leave without permission and they could be shot by their own troops.

Yet perhaps not surprisingly the numbers arrested crossing the fence illegally have halved in the past year. The Indians say the Mumbai terror attacks have changed the equation, and that soldiers give ample warning before criminals and terrorists are shot. 

ASTON

SK Mitra, 

Former Inspector General, BSF 

This is the security of my nation! If someone wants to tamper with the arrangements of national security, I feel that the security forces, after

Anyone wishing to tamper with….

VO

That night in the Indian border town of Murshidabad we were told of another shooting.  We drove to the hospital with a worried father who'd been told his son had been shot by the fence.    

At the hospital the father couldn't find his son on the ordinary wards because he was being treated in a locked cell.   

Only targeted he says, for tending his fields near the frontier.

Aston:

Shyam Charan Mondol

"They shot me in the arm and I shouted ‘don’t kill me!’

Now they try and say I am a cattle smuggler. But I don’t even own a cow. I don't own anything!

VO

The fence is two thirds completed now. Last week the Indian officer in charge of guarding it told the Bangladeshis he had "zero tolerance" for human rights abuses. Though his troops have reportedly killed another 7 people on both sides in the last few days.