It is great news for us because Bangladeshi Passenger trains began rolling India yesterday, resuming a service suspended more than four decades ago due to a war between India and Pakistan. Direct train service resumed yesterday - the first day of the Bengali new year - after being cut by war 43 years ago, with traditional musicians and officials sending off the festooned inaugural train.

The train was expected to make the 345km journey from Dhaka to the eastern Indian city of Kolkata in about 12 hours, said Mahbubur Rahman, an official with Bangladesh’s Ministry of Communications.

Huge crowds of cheering people lined the railway tracks on the border between India and Bangladesh yesterday as passenger train services between Kolkata and Dhaka resumed after a gap of more than 40 years.

The service was suspended after a 1965 war between India and Pakistan, when Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan, and the reopening caps years of negotiations on restoring links between the two parts of Bengal.

A train carrying 65 passengers rolled from India into Bangladeshi territory through the Darshana border post, about 320km west of the capital Dhaka.

Bangladesh, which became independent from Pakistan in 1971, was part of East Bengal before the 1947 partition and its people share a common history, culture and language with those in the Indian state of West Bengal.

“It is a historic occasion and the beginning of a new era.