M A I N   N E W S

Vajpayee takes grim view
Convenes high-level meeting today

New Delhi, April 21
Taking a grim view of the mutilation of bodies of 16 BSF personnel, the Prime Minister today asked the External Affairs Ministry to take up the issue and lodge a ‘serious’ protest with the Bangladesh Government after ascertaining full facts.

“The Prime Minister is perturbed by the reports that mutilated bodies were returned by Bangladesh Rifles officers yesterday,” an official spokesperson said this morning. Mr Vajpayee also spoke today to Home Minister L. K. Advani, who had gone to Ahmedabad for an official visit, and sought full details.

Mr Vajpayee also asked BSF chief Gurbachan Jagat, who is camping at Shillong, to immediately rush to New Delhi and also sought factual details on reports of torture by BDR personnel in the recent clashes between Bangladeshi villagers and members of the security forces.

Meanwhile, Mr Vajpayee has convened a high-level meeting here tomorrow to discuss the developments along the India-Bangladesh border and the brutal killing of 16 BSF personnel by Bangladesh Rifles, highly placed sources said tonight.

The Union Home Minister, Mr L. K. Advani, and the External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, would attend the meeting, the sources said.

Later, India today lodged a strong protest with Bangladesh over the “inhuman treatment” of BSF personnel by Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and demanded immediate return of two injured soldiers in Bangladeshi custody.

As a shocked nation woke up to a photograph of the body of a BSF jawan being carried like an animal and watched gruesome pictures of the mutilated bodies of the soldiers on television channels, Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer summoned Bangladesh High Commissioner Mostafa Farooque Mohammed to the Foreign Office and conveyed New Delhi’s concern over the brutality inflicted on the BSF men. PTI, UNI