Three suspected Bangladeshi cattle thieves were killed and two Indian villagers injured in a clash between them in a border village in Tripura’s Khowai district on Wednesday, the police said.
The police said the two Indian villagers, both residents of Bidyabil under the Champahowar police station limits, had gone out to work at a rubber plantation near the India-Bangladesh border when they noticed three Bangladeshi men hiding there. When confronted, the three men allegedly turned violent and attacked the villagers with sharp weapons, leaving them injured.
Later, the two men returned to their village and informed others of the incident. A group of villagers then rushed to the area and caught the suspected Bangladeshi cattle thieves. In an ensuing clash, the three suspected cattle thieves were killed and two Indian villagers injured, according to the police. The injured villagers are undergoing treatment at a local government hospital.
The police, who have sent the three bodies for a postmortem and started an investigation, are yet to identify the suspected cattle thieves from Bangladesh. They said the situation in the area was now under control.
In an unrelated development, the police and the Border Security Force conducted a joint operation in the Karamtilla border area of South Tripura district and recovered clothes worth Rs 8 lakh, a BSF spokesman said.
The spokesman said that BSF troops had in separate operations foiled many smuggling attempts, rescued cattle, and seized contraband worth Rs 5 lakh that was about to be smuggled into the neighbouring country, with which Tripura shares an 856-km-long partially porous border.
