The Importance of Being Accurate

Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed’s attempt at playing down the killing of Bangladeshi civilians by Indian border guards amounts to a rather tawdry attempt, to put it mildly, at jurisprudential reasoning.

That Ahmed is woefully unapprised about the laws of India, Bangladesh and the international system, not to mention his ignorance about his own duties of his office, could not be more adequately demonstrated than by his response to reporters at the Secretariat on June 2, where he said people not killed at the Zero Point of Bangladesh’s border is a matter for India’s domestic law and effectively not his problem as Home Minister for Bangladeshis.

Perhaps the minister doesn’t know that the Indian law which governs the actions of that country’s border forces, the Border Security Force Act, 1968 which is still in effect, does not in fact permit the killing of individuals for trespass or smuggling at the border.  The ‘other crimes’ he alluded to at the conference would have to amount to an imminent threat of grave physical harm to patrolling officers, or other Indians, by armed suspects or a mob, to warrant summary execution.

Aside from the Border Security Force Act, other Indian domestic legislation also leaves no room for such killings. Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2024, India’s new penal code, a state actor inflicting death not required by the bounds of necessary self-defense may be open to criminal charges.

But the most important legal instrument Mr Ahmed clearly is not versed on is the 2011 Coordinated Border Management Plan (CBMP), which is a legally binding bilateral treaty.  It restricts the BSF and the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) to the use of strictly non-lethal weapons against unarmed cross-border violators. It mandates that all unarmed infiltrators must be detained and handed over to the counter-part border forces and not fired upon.

The Home Minister didn’t reference these but preferred instead to qualify the term ‘border killings.’ And he is right, the term ‘border killings’ is indeed improper. The correct term would be the illegal executions of unarmed civilians, incidentally a human rights violation.

Under international law, specifically Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the right to life is absolute and non-derogable. ‘Shoot-on-sight’ policies or the use of lethal force against unarmed individuals, smugglers, or irregular migrants, including at no man's land or in Indian territory, are classified as extra-judicial killings and serious human rights violations.

According to Human Rights Watch, the BSF's documented operations frequently involve shooting unarmed villagers, smugglers, or children who pose no national security risk or imminent threat to life.

But Mr Ahmed surely must know that much of Bangladesh's increasingly tense situation with India has very much to do with border killings, which by some estimates have risen to a 1,500+ since 2000, with at least 9 to 11 fatalities recorded in 2026. That this is an entirely intolerable relationship between two friendly nations with a treaty agreement seems to be obvious to everyone except the home minister of the country at the receiving end.

However, the matter goes to the very core of his professional duty and is something for which the public can rightly demand action, or in the very least a firm position on its unacceptability. His comment at the press conference certainly was not.

The protection of life and liberty is a core constitutional and operational mandate of the Home Minister in Bangladesh. He directs key security forces, including the Border Guards Bangladesh, to ensure the physical safety and security of citizens.

His ministry is tasked with ensuring that actions affecting the lives and personal liberty of Bangladeshi citizens are conducted strictly in accordance with the law, including when those involve a foreign government, but if the minister needs to be reminded of his job, the people of Bangladesh would be all too happy to oblige him.

Zeeshan Khan is the author of 'Right to Passage -- Travels Through India, Pakistan and Iran' and a barrister from Middle Temple.