Agartala, Feb 18,2023: A total of 13 Rohingyas, including three children, along with two Bangladeshi nationals and an Indian middleman were arrested from the Agartala railway station after they illegally entered India and were about to board a Kolkata-bound train, officials said on Saturday.

A police officer said that the Indian middleman helped the Rohingyas and the Bangladeshi nationals to sneak into Tripura, which shares 856 km borders with Bangladesh.

“We detained 16 people, including the three kids, when they were about to board the Kolkata-bound Kanchanjunga Express. They had planned to go to Jammu from Kolkata. We are now probing as to how and why these foreign nationals entered India illegally,” the officer said.

He said that Tripura is being used by the Rohingyas as a transit route to go to mainland India.

The officer said that so far in February, 33 foreigners, majority of them Rohingyas, have been arrested from the railway station after they came from their camps at Cox’s Bazar in Chittagong in Bangladesh.

The Border Security Force (BSF) had detained 370 persons, including 59 Rohingyas and 150 Bangladeshi nationals, in different operations in Tripura last year.

Since 2016, the Rohingyas, including women and children, have been fleeing from Myanmar to evade violence, taking shelter in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.