Racket of cattle smuggling in Bengal – CBI arrests leader of Trinamool Congress

CBI arrests a Trinamool Congress leader of Birbhum district in Bengal. He is Anubrata Mondal and is suspected of having links to a cattle smuggling racket. It seems the nexus includes senior BSF officers, other politicians and officials of the local administration. The state Criminal Investigation Department CID has already nabbed a person on charges of coal smuggling. That was on July 22 and investigation revealed his links to the cattle smuggling racket. This smuggling operation was in and around Basirhat in North 24 Parganas district. He had an accomplice who operated in other districts of Malda and Murshidabad. The money involved in cattle smuggling was in the range of Rs 1,500-2,000 crore and persons at various levels received pay offs. The list included politicians, police, administration and BSF officers. Cattle smuggling racket that TMC's Anubrata Mondal was involved in had a deep nexus.

The Border Security Force BSF had informed the Union Home Ministry about the extent of smuggling on the India-Bangladesh border. The BSF also shared a list of officers suspected to be involved in the racket. The CBI and ED arrested two of them in January 2018 and April 2022. Court martial proceedings are also initiated against two other BSF officers since April 2019. During interrogation, the name of a minister’s son, who is an MLA in UP surfaced. He is believed to be a beneficiary of the proceeds of cattle smuggling. As an official of the BSF admitted - “The illegal enterprise was most rampant between 2014 and 2019 when the politician-BSF-police nexus made windfall gains.”

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The researchers are from the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing in Dehradun, Jagannath University in Dhaka and Vrije University in Brussels and they have based their conclusions on a study of satellite imagery study. It has detected significant loss in mangrove forest density but very loss of land.
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Bangladesh wants to have dog squads to carryout security duties and has requested India to help them to set up a training centre for dogs. The proposal was mooted by the Border Security Force's counterpart, the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), when an Indian delegation led by BSF director general made a visit to Bangladesh last week.
The proposal is that Indian trainers from the National Training Centre for Dogs (NTCD) in Tekanpur, Gwalior, will train dogs and handlers at the proposed canine facility in Bangladesh.
In the past the NTCD has imparted training to canines and handlers for police in Nepal and Mauritius.
This has been reported in telegraphindia.com dated 27 February 2017.

The NTCD is run by the BSF and it trains canines of various breeds for all the police forces in the country and, in 2015, BSF-trained dogs had been inducted in the BGB for the first time. Some of these dogs were also inducted in security forces in Bangladesh for VIP duty. At that time the NTCD had trained 20 dogs and a similar number of handlers for the BGB and last year it was 18 pups.
Each of the German Shepherds are procured for Rs 30,000 and were trained for six months along with the handlers before being handed over to the BGB.
This breed of dogs are effective in tracking criminals and patrolling and, especially, for VIP security because they are good at detecting hidden explosives.


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Bus service from Kolkata to Khulna takes off on trial basis

A bus has taken off from Kolkata to Khulna on a trial basis under the Bangladesh Bhutan India Nepal (BBIN) Agreement. Last year, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had launched bus services from Kolkata to Dhaka also under the BBIN agreement.
This has been reported in thestatesman.com dated 31 August 2016.

The bus will go from Kolkata to Khulna via Jessore and the bus service, on trial basis, was flagged off from the Kasba Paribahan Bhavan by the transport minister Shubhendu Adhikari. The bus will be operated by the West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation and will cover the 185-Km in around 12 hours taking into account immigration checks and traffic congestion. A regular time table will be finalized after the trial run.
The state government has decided to operate more buses to a number of destinations in Bangladesh. These will be Siliguri to Chittagong via Phulbari, Kolkata to Chittagong via Dhaka and Benapole, Guwahati to Kolkata via Shillong, Dhaka, Benapole and Petrapole.
The state government is also keen to introduce bus services to popular tourist destinations, including Dhaka-Kathmandu and Dhaka - Thimpu via Fulbari in Siliguri.
A cargo vehicle from Kolkata to Dhaka was also flagged off. The Bangladesh government also introduced a cargo vehicle service today from Dhaka to Delhi via Kolkata.
These are intended to improve regional co-operation among India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.


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27th Travel & Tourism Fair takes off in Kolkata - Thailand is the Feature country

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First half of the show (i.e. from Friday to Saturday till 2 pm) is reserved for the travel trade. After that it will be opened to the public (i.e. from Saturday afternoon till Sunday evening). Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Rajasthan, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir are the Partner States for the event whereas Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are the Feature States. In addition, Bangladesh and Nepal are participating in a big way as the Partner Countries with Thailand as the Feature Country.
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The kid is now 13 years old and will be reunited with his family when he is flown home, thanks to the intervention of the external affairs ministry.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 30 June 2016.

The reunion has been made possible because of a good Samaritan in the form of a Bangladeshi mechanic. He had seen the small boy being ill-treated by the woman for whom he worked in a village near Dhaka. He talked to the boy and realized that he had been abducted from his home in Delhi. He, therefore, informed the authorities, traveled to Delhi and contacted the boy's parents.
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This has been reported in hindustantimes.com dated 10 June 2016.

The price paid for the fish is an all time record as vouched for by the traders at the wholesale market in Howrah where the fish was sold. The buyer was a retailer from Gariahat Market in posh South Kolkata and it was obvious that some lucky son-in-law would get an opportunity to taste it. As the vendor explained - he had bought the fish from a company of Myanmar and, when he put it up for auction, the bidders were desperate to lay hands on it. Since there was no Hilsa coming from Bangladesh, the demand for the king of fish was obviously high.


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