Over 200 Bangladeshis spent their fourth day on Tuesday out in the open in the 'no man's land' between India and Bangladesh in West Bengal's Cooch Behar district, as tension continued to mount with both sides refusing to budge from their positions.
The current spell of tension began last Friday after the Border Security Force stopped a group of 213 people that the Bangladesh Rifles had tried to push into India through the Cooch Behar sector.
The group admitted to being from Bangladesh, but the BDR refused to buy the argument.
"We have proof about us being Bangladeshi citizens and are unable to understand why we are not being allowed to return to our homes," Din Islam, the leader of the group, said.
Islam, who was severely beaten up by Bangladeshi villagers on Monday when he tried to re-enter Bangladesh, said his group was rounded up by the BDR and pushed into India.
Although the BSF, the Cooch Behar district administration and the local people pooled their resources to provide food and medical aid to the stranded Bangladeshis, the condition of the women and children had begun to deteriorate.
On Tuesday morning, the BSF arranged for a doctor to examine the women and children and also provide basic medicine. The BSF doctor said that the children were suffering from dysentery and pneumonia while the women were malnourished.
"We could not just watch these people go hungry and without medicines," BSF Deputy Inspector General D L Choudhury said.
The authorities also shifted them to a cleaner place.
On the other side of the border across Satgachi village in Cooch Behar district, the BDR had started digging up trenches.
