BSF, Pakistan Rangers not to resort to cross-border firing

At a time when relations between India and Pakistan have taken a nosedive following new revelations on Islamabad lending support to perpetrators of 26/11 terror strike, forces guarding the border of two nations are trying to douse the fire by agreeing not to pull trigger along the fence in Jammu and Kashmir.    

The Border Security Force (BSF) and Pakistan Rangers concluded their four-day meeting here on Thursday by accepting some confidence building measures including preventing cross-border firing along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir. The two delegation also signed a joint record of discussions of the meet.

Pakistani Rangers DG Major General Rizwan Akhtar said: “We talked in detail (on the issue of cross border firing)...This should not happen. We will better the mechanism, we will ensure that those parameters that we have discussed here (during the meeting) will be told to every trooper on the border and we believe that we will have better results.”

Seconding Akhtar’s view, BSF DG U K Bansal said that steps would also be taken to ensure that ceasefire violations do not aggravate. “We have existing methods of flag meetings and border talks.

We will use these modalities and with the joint confidence that we both are in favour such instances should be controlled immediately. With this mutual confidence the border commanders will deal with this issue,” he said.

Both the DGs agreed that people, who unintentionally cross the border, will be treated in a humanitarian way by two forces.  BSF DG stated, “treating it as a humanitarian matter, we will take every measure possible to quickly verify the intention and antecedents and identify the individual and repatriate him so that the situation does not lead to the person being arrested and then he languishing in a jail of the other country for many months.

This was another positive step that was discussed.” However, the Pakistan Rangers chief was not willing to accept that his country was aiding illegal smuggling of fake Indian currency. “No it is not correct to say that fake currency is being pumped (from across the border)...Fake currency can be made anywhere in the world...It can be manufactured in India...The maximum consumption of fake Indian currency is in India only,” he claimed.

But Akhtar said that there was a need to work in tandem with the BSF to stop smuggling of narcotics and infiltration.