Agartala, May 8 (IANS): Tripura Police on Friday arrested 10 Bangladeshi construction workers here for illegally staying in the bordering state much before the lockdown began in India.

West Tripura District police chief Manik Lal Das said that acting on a tip-off, police arrested the Bangladeshi youths from a house at Joynagar, just adjacent to the capital city. "These Bangladeshi workers illegally entered into Tripura much before the lockdown began (on March 25) in India and engaged themselves in construction works," Das told IANS.

Police presented them in a local court which sent them to seven-day police custody.

Two days ago the Tripura police also arrested a 35-year-old Bangladeshi woman and her two children from her relative's house at Gandhigram (in western Tripura) for entering India illegally. The woman and her four-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter entered Tripura from neighbouring Sylhet district (eastern Bangladesh) prior to the lockdown in India.

The Indian government in mid-March closed the 4,096-km India-Bangladesh border. Border Security Force troopers are maintaining a strict vigil along the frontier, vast areas of which remain unfenced.

The COVID-19 outbreak turned into an alarming situation in Bangladesh where the total number of confirmed corona positive cases crossed 13,130 and the death toll has increased to 206 with the virus spreading to 62 of the country's 64 districts including the capital Dhaka.