Spies masquerading as evacuees
From Our Own Correspondent, TURA (Meghalaya). JUNE 13 – A Muslim evacuees without family who had lived in the Dimapara camp for several days furtively left the camp at nightfall on June 11 and was believed to have slipped back into East Pakistan. And at Machangpani camp in the same evening, some evacuees handed over to Indian Security forces a stranger of similar description charged with suspicious movements and making incorrect statements.
These were the two camps among a total of 16 in Garo Hills and the Prime Minister visited them yesterday. It is significant that these incidents took place just on the eve of Mrs. Gandhi’s visit.
Indeed, it is a threat to her internal and external security that stares India in the face in the border regions of Meghalaya as well as of Assam in the wake of the Bangladesh tragedy and its upshot, the evacuees influx. Legions of Pakistani spies and saboteurs have it appears managed to cross into these areas masquerading as evacuees. More than 100 such subversive elements have till now been detected and taken into custody.
And this presents itself as a more serious problem to India as a whole than the problems faced by the Governments and people of border States in sustaining economic and racial equilibrium of the respective regions or in providing adequate succor and subsistence to helpless evacuees. The said problem is accentuated by the fact that – these bad elements from Pakistan often try to vitiate the local atmosphere by spreading rumors and fomenting racial or linguistic tensions calculated to provide an edge to Pakistan’s anti-India tirade.
The Pakistani Army which incidentally has now fanned out all along the 144 mile Garo Hills-Mymensingh border line committed an act of extreme tragedy at Dalu on May 24. In the evening of that day, 15 to 20 Pak troops in the guise of borka-clad Muslim women entered old Dalu Bazar in the company of a batch of feigned evacuees who ultimately proved to be deportees from Assam, on their arrival at the market, they entered a Marwari shop and killed two persons there including a genuine evacuees. Then they took off their cloaks and revealed their uniformed and equipped selves and started firing from light machine-guns.
In that sudden attack, nine BSF men and 18 civilians were officially killed though an unofficial source at Dalu told me yesterday that people saw many other bodies lying in the area and that some corpses were also seen floating on the Bhogai river which flows along the International border.
Following that incident border skirmishes in that sector are nearly a daily event now.
Most of the spying activities along the Garo Hills border are believed to be carried on by erstwhile deportees from Assam and Meghalaya who are now sitting on the fence between India and Pakistan that sensitive sector. A few thousands of these deportees have, however entered India following the Bangladesh tragedy and are sheltered in camps on humanitarian grounds. But a few hundreds are still living in the border villages of Mymensingh district as proteges of the Pakistani Army. They cross the border at convenience and as was the case during the Khan Army’s raid on Dalu Bazar provide a cover to Pakistani marauders when they want to intrude.
An official source at Tura yesterday, however, denied during a chat with me that any significant number of evacuees had returned to Bangladesh out of disgust or became aware of the drudgeries of camp life. He said that as far as he knew some evacuees who had yet to get registered and admitted in a camp returned to their homeland after hearing that the Mukti Fouj had liberated the localities. This was not quite unwelcome, according to him, though the number of such voluntary repatriates was not more than 1500 in all so far.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 14.06.1971