Tripura State Rifles (TSR) personnel, deployed on the border to foil infiltration from Bangladesh, run the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus, which has spread among two Border Security Force (BSF) battalions in the State.
The TSR had extensively been used in counter-insurgency operations in the State till 2006. Its battalions have been deployed on the border, for the first time, on an instruction from the Ministry of Home Affairs in the third week of April when cases spiked in Bangladesh, sources said.
The battalions have been deployed in Sonamura, Boxanagar, Kamalasagr, Sabroom, Mohanpur, Khowai, Gandacherra and Kanchanpur. Several stretches in these areas remain unfenced because of local protests or a dispute over demarcation with Bangladesh that shares a 856-km border with Tripura.
COVID-19 has affected the BSF’s 138th and 86th battalions that have their headquarters and residential campuses at Ambassa in Dhalai district, which has become a hotspot. Until Thursday, the State reported 82 cases, most of them BSF jawans and their family members from these campuses, which were sealed and declared containment zones.
BSF soldiers often set out from their campuses for border locations. This was the reason health officials wanted extensive tests among TSR jawans. “We have conducted sample tests of TSR jawans at some places. More will be done on an urgent basis,” an official of the COVID1-9 Task Force said.
The BSF has sent reinforcements to the areas manned by the two battalions.
