The Mizoram police in northeast India have been directed to crack down on Burmese smugglers who cross the porous Indo-Burma border. The directives followed a meeting between the Mizoram police and the Burmese Army.
On October 4, Pu Lalthanawia, Superintendent of Police Champhai district in Mizoram talked to his talk counterpart Lieutenant Colonel Htey Win from the Burmese Army in Zokhuathar village in Mizoram, according to a local newspaper 'Vanglaini".
At the meeting, Col. Htey Win told SP, Pu Lalthanawia that a smuggler who killed a Lance Corporal of the Burmese Army's Infantry Battalion 87 in Leilet village on September 23 was believed to have escaped to Mizoram, Vanglaini reported.
After the meeting, SP Pu Lalthanawia directed the police force to investigate whether the smuggler, who murdered a Burmese soldier, was taking refuge in Mizoram. He said the the Mizoram police would cooperate with Burmese authorities in cracking down on smuggling from Burma to Mizoram, Vanglaini added.
The newspaper quoted SP Pu Lalthanawia as saying that in the event of Burmese nationals, who smuggle sophisticated weapons and drugs, are arrested, the Mizoram police will immediately hand them over to the Burmese authorities.
Meanwhile, it is also learnt that Mizo youth had detained a Burmese smuggler in Saikhum village in Mizoram in connection with the Burmese soldier's killing. Later, the arrested Burmese smuggler was taken to the police station in Champhai where he is being detained.
A Lance Corporal was shot dead in a forest near Leilet village in Falam Township while on duty monitoring the activities of smugglers and other traders trying to cross the Indo-Burma border to Mizoram. The gun of the soldier was also missing, according to villagers in Leilet village.
Frustrated Burmese soldiers allegedly detained several village council members from Leilet and its nearby villages for interrogation.
Several villagers were also forced to search for the lost gun in the forest. Some villagers fled to India in order to avoid persecution and torture by Burmese soldiers in connection with the murder.
