What the 57th border talks refused to say about BSF killings and push-ins

When diplomatic talks fail, the language of their conclusion is usually the last to admit it. The joint press release from the 57th Director General-level Border Coordination Conference in New Delhi between the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and India’s Border Security Force (BSF), issued Friday after a day’s delay, is a document worth reading with that in mind. It describes a conference held in a “cordial, positive, and forward-looking atmosphere,” reflecting “enduring cooperation and mutual trust,” where both delegations “expressed satisfaction with the outcome.” None of this is untrue in the way that lies are untrue. It is untrue in the way that omission or dilution is untrue.

Let’s begin with the language itself. The joint press release says both sides discussed, among other things, “border deaths” and “illegal, inadvertent and forcible crossings.” That single clause contains the entire crisis, drained of urgency. “Border deaths” is the term the joint release uses for what the human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra documented as 34 Bangladeshi citizens killed by the BSF in 2025 alone — 24 in shootings, 10 after physical torture. “Forcible crossings” is the phrase used for what the BGB foiled at least 39 times over the past few days when these talks were taking place: coordinated attempts to push men, women, and children across the border without verification, through land points in districts such as Panchagarh and Thakurgaon, through river routes along the Sundarbans coast in Satkhira, at night with border security lights switched off.

Neither “push-in” nor “BSF killings” appears anywhere in the joint press release. Rather, the sanitised vocabulary of this release is in stark contrast to BGB’s own separate press release on the same meeting. BGB’s one explicitly refers to border killings as “deaths of unarmed and innocent Bangladeshi nationals resulting from the use of lethal and non-lethal weapons by BSF personnel,” describing such incidents as “clear violations of human rights.” It also repeatedly uses the term “push-ins” to describe recent cross-border expulsions and frames them as violations of the Joint India-Bangladesh Guidelines for Border Authorities and the Coordinated Border Management Plan (CBMP). It also records specific grievances regarding alleged unauthorised border infrastructure within 150 yards of the international boundary and multiple instances of attempted fencing deviations.

The contrast in language shows that the disagreement is not whether these issues were discussed, but how much of that discussion is allowed to survive in the jointly authored diplomatic record.

Even last year’s joint press release on the 56th BGB-BSF conference, held in Dhaka in August under the Yunus-led interim government, did not have such sanitised language. That statement recorded both sides agreeing to curb border killings and halt the use of lethal weapons at the frontier. The conference concluded with a joint press conference at which both directors general spoke on the record. The 57th, however, produced no joint press conference. The press release itself was delayed until the morning after the talks ended.

What explains this regression? The 56th conference was held under a non-elected government in Bangladesh, the 57th under a political government. On June 2, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told reporters that deaths occurring when someone is “involved in crime or illegal intrusion” within a border force’s territory should not be called border killings. It was a redefinition offered voluntarily, six days before Bangladesh sat across from the BSF, that effectively endorsed India’s long-standing justification for its use of lethal force. On June 9, Information Adviser Zahed Ur Rahman described push-ins as West Bengal’s internal political matter, not the Indian government’s intention to “create tension in Bangladesh.” Both statements reduced Bangladesh’s negotiating position before and during the talks, and neither produced any reciprocal Indian gesture.

What India’s side had to say was equally revealing in its omissions. BSF Director General Praveen Kumar’s position, according to the diplomatic sources in New Delhi, mirrored the Ministry of External Affairs line: actions against illegal foreigners are being taken in accordance with domestic laws and established bilateral procedures. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had already put a number to those actions on June 7—claiming 4,800 “Bangladeshi infiltrators” deported, with 836 more in custody. BGB Deputy Director General Colonel Abul Hasnat Mohammad Mahmud Azam contradicted that figure, stating that “none was pushed into Bangladesh in the past one month.” Two sides, one forum, irreconcilable accounts of what has actually occurred. That the talks concluded without resolving even this factual dispute shows what the joint record of discussions is actually worth.

The joint press release says both sides agreed to “strengthen coordinated patrols, enhance vigilance, improve real-time information sharing, and intensify joint efforts against trans-border criminal networks.” These commitments, if they can be called that, are indistinguishable from what the previous conferences said. There are no timelines, no benchmarks, and no consequences for breach. The Joint Record of Discussions is not even an agreement, when India’s countless violations of the 2011 CBMP, which is an agreement intended to reduce killings and the incidence of crime, are considered.

Perhaps the most consequential line in the document is the announcement that the next conference is “proposed to be held in Dhaka in November at a mutually convenient time”. However, between now and November, the West Bengal government’s “detect, delete, and deport” campaign is likely to continue operating under a Citizenship Amendment Act framework that specifically exempts Hindus and migrants from other faiths while targeting Muslim Bangladeshis. At the same time, it is very likely that the border will see more push-in attempts, more people stranded in no-man’s land, and the BSF will continue operating with a level of impunity that a half-century of DG-level talks since 1975 has never seriously challenged.

The talks have a legitimate function. They allow field commanders to share information. They create channels that are better than silence. But they cannot do what is being asked of them now, because the current crisis is not a border management problem. It is the execution of an electoral promise made by India’s ruling party to its base in a state of one hundred million people, enabled by a legal architecture that has formally encoded religious discrimination into immigration enforcement. An institution designed to resolve cattle-grazing disputes and coordinate smuggling interdiction cannot address that. No number of DG-level meetings, joint records, and reaffirmed commitments will change a political calculation being made not at the BSF headquarters in New Delhi but in the BJP’s West Bengal apparatus.

The media reported that in the press release of the 57th conference, the Bangladesh and Indian delegations expressed confidence that the decisions and understandings reached during the meeting would further enhance bilateral cooperation. On the evidence available, there is no reason to share that confidence. People are still being pushed. People are still being shot. As recently as on Friday evening, yet another Bangladeshi youth was killed in firing by the BSF along the Kulaura border in Moulvibazar. However, the language used last year in a joint press release, “without any killing on either side,” is amiss.

Jannatul Naym Pieal is a writer, researcher, and journalist. He can be reached at jn.pieal@gmail.com.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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