{ BSF OFFICIALS } ALONG INDIA-’DESH BORDER 'Kids being used to smuggle at border'

BSF officials maintain that over the last few years, several such incidents have come to fore where children were being used as couriers to smuggle gold and contraband across the largely unfenced border. Data from BSF's South Bengal Frontier, which guards India’s eastern borders with Bangladesh, reveal that around 80 children have been detained for smuggling activities in border villages across south Bengal between 2021 and November 2025.

- Joydeep Thakur

and November 2025. The border here spans roughly 920 km.

This year alone, 11 such cases have been reported, including the gold smuggling attempt on October 22 at Daharkanda village in Hakimpur of North 24 Parganas district.

“Around 10.30 am, we saw the boy suspiciously moving towards the border. He was wearing black shorts and a dark pink T-shirt. Our men immediately chased the boy and caught him. At least 11 gold biscuits, kept in a black polythene packet, were seized from him,” a BSF official posted in Hakimpur said.

The boy, 12, was subsequently handed to the customs department along with the seized gold and produced before the Juvenile Justice Board, which sent him to a juvenile home, officials said.