The Bangladesh Rifles returned two school students who had served one-and-half year in a Bangladesh jail for unintentionally crossing the international boundary while playing football.

The BDR jawans handed over Bijoy Karmakar and Mithun Hrishidas of Aralia to the BSF at the Akhaura check post on Wednesday evening.

They were arrested in December 2006 for crossing the international boundary at Kasba area of Tripura.

Both of them were playing football in a ground and crossed the border inadvertently, when BDR caught them and produced them before the Comilla court.

The Comilla district court had asked the authorities to release them within a month of their arrest after taking a penalty of Rs 1000 each. But that did not happen because a Parliamentary Committee on deportation had not approved the deportation order as their names were misspelled.

According to Mithun's father Ranjan Hrishidas, he had gone to Bangladesh five times to get back his son and Bijoy but the jail authority turned him back repeatedly, showing various administrative difficulties.