People of Musarhar settlement at Bathnaha-6 in the district have been left in the lurch after the Indian Seema Surakshya Bal (SSB) razed the houses and structures in the village on Sunday saying that they were “constructed illegally”. The Indian paramilitary border force said that they had demolished the structures as the locals had built them by “encroaching the no-man’s land” in the district. According to Ram Prasad Sada, a local whose house was also demolished, said all of a sudden eight SSB personnel entered his village from ward-4 in the eastern side of the border at around 8 am and told them to remove all their belongings from the houses as soon as possible as they were living in a no-man’s land. They further warned that additional forces were on the way and that they would demolish the houses and buildings with all their property and other belongings in it in case of their failure to comply. “Around two hours later, approximately 200 SSB personnel armed with modern weapons and batons reached the settlement and demolished scores of buildings and structures in the village,” Sada complained. The SSB has demolished 23 houses belonging to 17 households on the Nepali side and 19 houses with 18 families on the Indian side of the no-man’s land. The settlement dominated by Dalits comprises of 90 households. Furthermore, locals have been gripped by the fear of losing their houses and property following SSB’s warning that they will destroy all the houses and buildings in the village if the locals fail to comply. Meanwhile, saying that the SSB has not razed so many buildings and structures on the Nepali side of the no-man’s land, Chief District Officer Deepak Kafle claimed that only two houses in Nepal had been destroyed as per his knowledge. While locals said that the government should take up the issue seriously as the victims have Nepali citizenships, CDO Kafle questioned as to why these people were living in the Indian side of the no-man’s land if they had Nepali citizenships. Laxman Sada, another local whose house was demolished by SSB personnel, said that they been living in the area since ages, and with the growth in their population, the settlement slowly started spreading to the no-man’s land.