A cow from Nadia’s Hogolberia that was allegedly stolen and taken to Bangladesh on Saturday prompted border guards on both sides to launch a 24-hour hunt to rescue the animal and send it to its original home on Sunday.

Border Security Force (BSF) and Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) — on either side of the border in Nadia’s Kacharipara and Kushthia’s Ramkrishnapur in Bangladesh took up a joint task to trace the cow. They communicated across the border several times and held a flag meeting on an issue they were handling for the first time to help a poor farmer, the animal’s owner.

It all began with Munni going “missing” during the early hours of Saturday from her Kacharipara home. Munni’s owner, farmer Biplab Mandal, 41, was the first to notice it. He pleaded with the BSF personnel of battalion 141 at the nearby outpost to bring back Munni.

“Vigil is strict on the border now, but I still thought Munni was stolen because the riverine border in our area is porous,” Mandal said.

Since a narrow stretch of the Padma with waist-level water is the demarcation between the two countries in that area, sneaking into Indian territory is possible despite BSF vigil.

The intelligence wing of the BSF took up the matter with its Bangladeshi counterpart. The response from the other side of the border was warm, said sources.

“We took up the matter with the other side to bring back the cow and see its owner happy. Since Saturday morning, we exchanged calls.... Good news came on Sunday morning,” a BSF official said.

On Sunday, BGB officials from Ramkrishnapur outpost at Kushthia called the BSF to say Munni had been found.

In the afternoon, a BSF team led by company commander Dilip Kumar Medhi met a BGB team near border pillar 154/4S, where BGB camp commander Abdul Rehman handed over Munni to his Indian counterpart.