Eyewitness
By Subir Bhaumik BBC east India correspondent

Indian and Bangladeshi border guards have started digging trenches and deploying additional troops amid a tense stand-off along their border.

At stake is the disputed nationality of more than 200 people stranded in no-man's land between the two countries since last Friday.

We were under the impression that the BDR was taking us to some frontier area within Bangladesh Anesha Bibi

Both sides accuse the other of trying to force these people, most of them poor snake charmers, into each other's country.

India says they are Bangladeshi citizens - something corroborated by most of the refugees - but Dhaka rejects this view.

Snake charmers

For five days now, they have lived under an open sky, braving biting cold and hunger and the guns of the border guards on both sides of the tense frontier.

Families are cold and hungry (Image by Shiv Shankar Chatterji)

Shahabuddin, 34, is a snake charmer, like most of the others in the group.

"We are citizens of Bangladesh," he says.

What upsets him most is the way the country he says he belongs to refuses to take him back.

Shahabuddin is prepared for the worst.

He says bullets hold no terror for him after the harrowing experience of the past few days.

Hungry children

Fatema Bibi says she has not had a decent meal for the past four days.

She says she can put up with it but she can no longer bear the cries of her hungry children.

Her sister, Anesha Bibi, is angry at being tricked into leaving their settlement at Savar near Dhaka for the border by officials of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).

Security is tight on both sides of the border (Image by Shiv Shankar Chatterji)

"We were under the impression that the BDR was taking us to some frontier area within Bangladesh, where we will get all the incentives for settling down," she says.

Instead, she found herself in India.

When they realised they were being pushed into India, they decided to return to Savar.

'Beaten up'

But Din Islam realised it would not be easy.

"I was beaten up by the BDR and some gangsters in the border villages who were mobilised by them," says Islam, his head in bandages.

Independent analysts say that Bangladesh wants to prevent Indian border police from pushing back hundreds of alleged Bangladesh nationals who were arrested in Indian states in January.

By pushing some people from Bangladesh over the border, the BDR managed to divert India's attention, forcing officials to concentrate on the area between the village of Mathabhanga, in India, and Lalmonirhat in Bangladesh, analysts say.

The local commander of the Indian Border Security Force, KC Sharma, told the BBC it was now up to Delhi and Dhaka to sort out the problem.

He said five rounds of negotiations between him and his Bangladesh Rifles' counterpart had failed.

But on Wednesday, both the BSF and the BDR troops started digging in and calling in reinforcement - bringing back memories of a fierce border clash between the two sides two years ago.

On that occasion, Bangladeshi soldiers killed 14 Indian troops.