Shimmering piles of silver fish are snapped up for exorbitant prices in India's port of Kolkata, the unlikely side effect of a diplomatic fallout after a student-led revolution in neighboring Bangladesh.

Demand is so high for the herring-like hilsa — the national fish of Bangladesh and a much-loved delicacy in India's adjoining West Bengal state — that Dhaka this year banned exports.

The decision follows a festering diplomatic dispute between Dhaka and New Delhi, after Bangladesh's autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August and escaped by helicopter to old ally India.