NEW DELHI — India's Border Security Force has proposed deploying crocodiles and venomous snakes into riverine stretches along the country's border with Bangladesh to act as natural deterrents against undocumented migration and smuggling in places where fencing is difficult to erect. In an internal communication dated March 26, the BSF ordered personnel at its headquarters on the eastern and northeastern fronts to explore the feasibility of deploying reptiles in vulnerable riverine gaps and to share action taken after receiving the direction.

The India-Bangladesh border runs 4,096 km (2,545 miles) through challenging terrain along the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram. New Delhi has fenced nearly 3,000 km of the boundary, with remaining stretches including marshy and riverine areas where local populations live on either side. Some sections are impossible to fence.

A Ministry of Home Affairs report last year stated that riverine and low-lying areas, border-proximate habitations, pending land acquisition cases and protests by the border population have slowed fencing installation. The same report noted that despite the difficult terrain, the BSF has performed its duty to curb illegal cross-border activities and undocumented migration from Bangladesh.

Researcher Angshuman Choudhury criticized the proposal. "This would be hilarious if it weren't sinister and dangerous," he said. "Once you release venomous snakes and crocodiles, they won't be able to differentiate if it's a Bangladeshi or Indian."

Choudhury also said: "This is peak cruelty against and dehumanisation of undocumented immigrants. A whole new way of weaponising nature and animals against human beings. It's biopolitical violence of a new kind."

Rathin Barman, chief of strategy and liaison at the Wildlife Trust of India, raised ecological objections. "Crocodiles are not native to the riverine stretches along the India-Bangladesh border," he said. "A species of crocodile is found in the Sundarbans in southern West Bengal, and another is found in the restricted wetlands of Assam, far from the border areas."

Barman also warned: "I am concerned about other creatures who have equal rights to live in this world and in those stretches."

Human rights activist Harsh Mander linked the proposal to broader policy. "Rather than engaging with Bangladesh's government and following the judicial process to hand over undocumented immigrants, India has opted for extrajudicial methods to deal with them," he said. "India's approach on the question of what they call 'contested citizenship' is one of both cruelty and the defiance of the constitution and international principles."

India set up foreign tribunal courts in Assam to determine whether a person suspected of being an illegal migrant is a foreigner or an Indian citizen under the Foreigners Act of 1946. There are no formal statistics on the number of undocumented migrants in India, and the last census was undertaken in 2011.