Bangladesh and India’s border patrol forces are slated to hold summit talks at the end of the month, the Home Ministry has said.

The Border Coordination Conference, a meeting between the directors general (DG) of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and India’s Border Security Force (BSF) is scheduled to be held in New Delhi from August 20-25.

BGB chief Major General Aziz Ahmed will lead the 22-member Bangladeshi delegation, a senior official at the home ministry said.

The Bangladesh side is likely to raise objections to the Felani trial after an Indian court acquitted the 15-year-old girl’s killer.

Border killing of Bangladeshi nationals by the BSF has been a thorny issue for the two countries.

A December 2010 Human Rights Watch report titled “Trigger Happy, Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladesh Border,” documented nearly 1,000 killings by the BSF over the period between 2000 and 2010.

That translates into a kill rate of one person every four days, Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s Asia division deputy director said at the time the report was released.

“We have objections to the Felani trial because it was not done properly and the guilty person was declared innocent,” the home ministry official told the Dhaka Tribune, on condition of anonymity.

Sources said human rights organisations in India were assisting Felani’s family to appeal the verdict.

On September 6, 2013, a special court set up by India’s Border Security Force acquitted BSF Constable Amiya Ghosh of the charge of killing Bangladeshi girl Felani Khatun at the Cooch Behar border.

BSF’s 181 Battalion Constable Amiya Ghosh, the prime accused, could not be found guilty because of “inconclusive and insufficient” evidence against him, the court said in its verdict.

The 15-year-old girl was shot dead by BSF while she was returning to her home in Bangladesh. Felani’s clothes got entangled in the barbed-wire as she tried to climb over the fencing along the Anantapur border in Kurigram on January 7, 2011, and the BSF shot and killed her.

While talking to this correspondent over the phone, BGB DG Aziz Ahmed said: “We will raise the issue of border killings at the meeting.”

“We will continue to raise the issue until border killings are brought down to zero level,” he said.

The official said curbing trans-border crimes and increasing coordinated patrolling on the border to prevent the movement of criminals, smugglers and insurgents across the international boundary will be discussed.

Fence shootings by Indian soldiers against Bangladeshis have continued despite an Indian promise to halt border killings made last year at the border conference held in Dhaka.

According to media reports, on June 28, 2014, BSF shot and killed a Bangladeshi trader on the Putkhali border in Jessore.

On February 26, 2014, BSF shot dead a Bangladeshi cattle trader on the Panchbibi frontier in Joypurhat.