India and Bangladesh are expected to discuss a host of issues related to crimes at their frontiers and other security challenges

Bangladesh will host a six-day Director General-level meeting between Bangladeshi and Indian border forces from September 13 at Border Guard Bangladesh’s (BGB) Pilkhana headquarters.

The two sides are expected to discuss a host of issues related to crimes at their frontiers and other security challenges.

The biannual talks will be held between BGB) director-general Major General M Shafeenul Islam and his newly appointed Indian counterpart Border Security Force (BSF) Rakesh Asthana said a PTI report carried by Business Standard.

The report quoted BGB's operations director Lieutenant Colonel Fayzur Rahman as saying that Bangladesh has always laid high importance to violence on the borders.

He further said cross-border smuggling particularly drug smuggling, construction of different structures like barbed wire fencing and other installations, toxic water flow from upstream India were other issues to be discussed in the meeting, according to the report.

The report quoted diplomatic sources as suggesting cattle smuggling, fake currency business, and human trafficking are likely to be major issues for the BSF side during the talks.

The sources revealed that alongside the BSF sector commanders, officials of India's Narcotics Control Bureau and representatives of the External Affairs Ministry and other agencies concerned would accompany Asthana in Dhaka.

According to the officials quoted in the report, the BGB and the BSF chiefs were likely to sign a joint record of discussion at the end of the talks, the 50th at the level of director-general since 1975.

The BGB-BSF director general-level talks will be held days ahead of a planned foreign minister-level Joint Consultative Commission (JCC) meeting using virtual media to be hosted by Dhaka later this month.