The border guards of the two countries are active at the checkpoints. They are searching the vehicles and the bodies of passengers to catch illegal shipments of gold and drugs. Food grains are also found in these searches. Shipments of sugar, grains, and even onions are also being intercepted. This image shows Benapole in the southern border district of Jessore in Bangladesh and the land port of Petrapole in western India on the other side. A Reuters report has highlighted how goods are smuggled through this border.
The northeastern city of Shillong is one of the tourist destinations in India. Many tourists from neighboring Bangladesh visit this picturesque hilly area. And under the cover of this movement is the smuggling of illegal goods. Smart smugglers use subtle strategies for this, but many are caught in the search.
Highlighting such an incident, an officer of the Indian Border Guard Force (BSF) in Shillong said that they arrested a group of smugglers last August. Sugar was found in their car during the search. They were being smuggled out by being cleverly hidden under sandbags.
Most of Bangladesh's food grains are imported from neighboring India. Apart from this, every year more than 2 million tons of food grains are smuggled from India to Bangladesh in exchange for gold shipments, Reuters reported, quoting land port officials.
In 2022, the country's government imposed a ban on the export of wheat, sugar, rice, onions and pulses due to the increase in the price of food products in India. As a result, the price of food in Bangladesh increased more than one and a half times compared to the price in India. By the middle of that year, gold prices had fallen by more than 50 percent. Smugglers benefited from this, they increased the amount of food grain smuggling.
In this context, in the last financial year 2023-24, the import of raw sugar from India to Bangladesh decreased by 25 percent to 13 lakh 86 thousand tons. The price of sweets in Bangladesh is almost twice as high as in India. As a result, smuggling of sugar from India increased. Then 4 lakh 50 thousand tons of sugar was smuggled, for which gold was used to pay the exchange price.
Referring to a smuggler in West Bengal, a BSF officer said that 4.7 kg of gold worth Tk 4.95 million was found inside the air filter of a smuggler's motorcycle arrested last October. The person was offered to take 18 gold biscuits to India as the selling price of the foodstuff smuggled from India to Bangladesh for just 14 thousand rupees.
Balwant Holkar, a businessman from Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, said that the government has tightened the export to reduce the price of agricultural products in the country. But the traffickers are taking full advantage of that move. But as a result the farmers are suffering.
A Bangladeshi businessman said, on the one hand, India is imposing restrictions on exports. On the other hand, Bangladesh sometimes increases the import duty. As a result, grain smuggling across the border has increased. This smuggling is going on across the 4,000 km border between the two countries.
Stakeholders believe that the combined revenue loss in India and Bangladesh due to illegal exchange of gold and food products could be several billion dollars. India's revenue intelligence said that almost one-third of the gold smuggled into India comes from Bangladesh. Most of this came in the form of grain prices. However, India lost an estimated $1.6 billion in tax revenue last year due to this smuggling.
James Jose, secretary of the Association of Gold Refineries and Mints, an organization of gold refiners in India, said that last July, gold import duties were reduced by 9 percentage points to the lowest level in a decade. Yet smuggling is increasing.
Harshad Ajmera of JJ Gold House, a wholesaler in Kolkata, told Reuters that gold refining profits in India are very low. But there is huge profit in gold smuggling. Because, in this case no tax has to be paid. As a result, it is not possible to compete with smugglers.
A new cycle was born to carry gold as exchange value for Indian goods. They are exchanging gold in Calcutta for cash.
An Indian carrier along the border said there has been no shortage of work for several years. As a result, his earnings have never been affected.
Translated from Reuters Farhana Ziasmin
