Agartala: A cattle smuggler was shot dead by BSF troops near the Indo-Bangla international border in Tripura's Sepahijala district on Saturday, police said.

Sonamura, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Souvik Dey told reporters that one Sharif Miah alias Tuhin (25), from Putia village in Kamthana area of Sonamura was challenged while smuggling cattle into the neighbouring country by BSF personnel of 74 Battalion deployed along India-Bangladesh border in the area.

"A group of people breached Indo-Bangla fence in the early hours this morning to smuggle cattle. One Vijay Kumar, a BSF constable challenged them. But the smugglers attacked him with sharp weapons. The personnel shot them in the legs with a non lethal weapon. The victim was stooping low, got hit in the chest and died," the SDPO said.

A senior BSF officer from Tripura frontier said their personnel opened fire from a non lethal pump action gun to incapacitate the smugglers since they had mounted an attack on him.

"The aim was to immobilize and incapacitate them.

Unfortunately, a smuggler died accidentally", the official said.

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New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the use of "derogatory language" against party chief Mallikarjun Kharge by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is an insult to the entire SC/ST community, and the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter "is not his helplessness, but his consent".

"If the prime minister sees an attack on the dignity of crores of Dalits in the country and does not speak up - he is not only shirking his responsibility, but is also a party to that insult," Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X.

Gandhi said the use of "vulgar and derogatory language" by Sarma against Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Kharge "is entirely condemnable, shameful, and unacceptable".

"Kharge ji is a senior and popular Dalit leader of the country - his experience, stature, and prestige are unparalleled. Insulting him is not an insult to one individual alone, but also to crores of people from the SC-ST community in this country," he posted.

This, he said, just reflected the "old and premeditated mindset" of the BJP-RSS and was nothing new, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha said.

"Whether it is the insult to Babasaheb Ambedkar, belittling Dalit leaders, or personal attacks on representatives of the SC-ST community - the history of BJP and RSS bears witness that whenever a Dalit leader speaks the truth, they stoop to humiliate him," he posted.

"This is their ideology, this is their true character and face," he added.

Posing a direct question to the PM, he asked, "do you support Himanta Sarma's use of this language? Your silence is not helplessness, it is consent."

Sarma earlier hit out at Kharge, claiming that he was "speaking like a madman" due to old age, after the latter put the onus on central agencies to probe the charges made against the Assam chief minister.

Slamming the Congress chief, Sarma said, "Kharge is ageing and is speaking like a pagal (madman)."