Bangladeshi Man Swims Across River To Enter India, Caught By Border Forces

Another Bangladeshi national attempted to flee to India by swimming across a river, a day after a seventeen-year-old Hindu girl crossed over to the Indian side.

The student, identified as 21-year-old Jiban Barman, was caught by the Border Security Force after he fled Bangladesh following alleged torture. He swam across the Korotwa river and reached West Bengal's Rajganj, where he was handed over to the police. He is a resident of Rangpur district and a student of Thakurgaon Government College.

His escape comes a day after a girl from Bangladesh ran through the night and crossed over to the Indian side, where she was detained and handed to the police. An ISKCON devotee, she said her family has been facing threats for being from the minority community for the past several weeks, but the situation got out of hand when fundamentalists in Bangladesh threatened to kidnap her and kill the rest of her family.

Incidents of communal violence are being widely reported across Bangladesh and people from the Hindu minority are being targeted. ISKCON devotees are the latest target since the arrest of Hindu priest Chinmoy Krishna Das in Dhaka on November 25. There have been incidents of mob violence and vandalism of property targeting the minority community.