India lodged a protest with Bangladesh Saturday over the mutilation of the bodies of 15 Indian border guards killed in skirmishes this week that increasingly appear to have been the result of intelligence failures.
"India has lodged a protest with the Bangladeshi high commissioner," an official in the office of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told AFP.
Foreign secretary Chokila Iyer summoned Bangladeshi High Commissioner Mostafa Farooque Mohammed to the foreign office to convey New Delhi's concern over the brutality inflicted on the border, the official said.
Media reports had earlier suggested that Vajpayee would speak to his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina Wajed on the subject.
"Reports that prime minister will be speaking to his Bangaldeshi counterpart are not correct," the official said.
The trouble started earlier in the week when troops of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) overran an outpost of the BSF in Pyrdiwah village, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Shillong, the provincial capital of the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.
This was followed by skirmishes on the border with neighboring Assam state, in which 19 guards from both sides, including 16 from India's paramilitary BSF, were killed.
BDR officials returned the bodies of 15 of the dead BSF personnel late Friday. They were "in a very bad condition, mutilated and bore burn marks," V.K. Gaur, the police chief of Meghalaya, said.
The 16th body was due to be returned on Saturday. It was unclear was state it was in.
Gaur described the situation in the area on Saturday morning as "calm." -- NEW DELHI (AFP)
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