ULFA leaders, 'detained in Dhaka', produced in Indian court
New Delhi, Nov 7 (bdnews24.com)Police in India's northeastern state of Assam produced two top leaders of the banned separatist outfit ULFA in a Guwahati court on Saturday.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate in Guwahati sent the duo to 10 days police custody after they were produced in his court on Saturday.
ULFA has alleged that its 'finance secretary' Chitrabon Hazarika and 'foreign secretary' Shashadhar Choudhury had been picked up by "unidentified armed men" from a house in Dhaka, Bangladesh, sometime between Nov 1 night and Nov 2 morning.
The outfit has called for a dawn-to-dusk general shutdown across the state of Assam on Monday (Nov 9) to protest against the detention of its leaders.
In a statement e-mailed to the press
, the ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa alleged that the detention of Hazarika and Choudhury from Dhaka was part of the Indian government's "conspiracy" to neutralise the organisation's leaders.
The organisation has also protested their "handover to Indian authorities" though Bangladesh has no extradition treaty with India.
Neither the Indian government in New Delhi nor the state government in Assam has made any official statement on how the two top rebel leaders landed in the custody of Indian police.
Sources in India's home ministry, however, speaking to bdnews24.com in New Delhi, said that Hazarika and Choudhury had been spotted by Border Security Force personnel at the Bangladesh-India border at Gokul Nagar in Tripura.
"They were trying to cross over to India from Bangladesh, when the BSF personnel spotted them and asked them to surrender. They surrendered and were taken into custody," an official of the Indian government's ministry of home affairs said on condition of anonymity.
He added that the two ULFA leaders had later been taken to Guwahati.
The Indian government and security agencies have long alleged that ULFA and other insurgent groups operating in the country's northeastern states have bases in Bangladesh.
They claim that ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, 'military chief' Paresh Barua and other leaders remote-control the outfit's subversive activities in Assam from Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh.
They have, however, acknowledged that Sheikh Hasina's government, coming to power in January this year, has come down heavily on ULFA leaders and their activities in Bangladesh, booking them in cases such as the 2004 Chittagong 'ten truck arms' haul.
The Indian government's ministry of external affairs has not yet made any formal statement on the detention of Hazarika and Choudhury.
But, according to sources, New Delhi perceives the Bangladesh government's "cooperation" in detaining the duo as "a good gesture" by Dhaka ahead of prime minister Sheikh Hasina's upcoming visit to India.
The ULFA or the United Liberation Front of Assam has been pursuing an armed rebellion since 1979 against what it terms New Delhi's "colonial rule" over the oil-rich tea-growing northeastern state.
The outfit had several camps in Bhutan too. But, in 2003, Bhutan launched a military offensive against them, dismantled its camps and detained a number of its leaders and guerrillas along with a large number of arms and huge quantity of ammunition.
The Bhutanese authorities later handed over the detained insurgents to Indian security forces, although the ULFA alleged that some of its leaders and activists had been killed even after they had surrendered.
ULFA later regrouped and continued its violent insurgency in the state including bombings. But it suffered a split last year, when some of its leaders declared a unilateral cease-fire agreement with the Indian government. New Delhi reciprocated, halting the security forces offensive against the outfit.
The ULFA's top leaders, including Rajkhowa and Barua, however, dissociated themselves from the peace-process and vowed to continue the "armed struggle to liberate Assam from Indian rule".
In March 2008, Mohammed Hafijur Rehman and Din Mohammed, both prime accused in the Chittagong arms haul case, confessed in court that a 10 truck-load consignment of weapons and ammunition, seized in the port city of Bangladesh in 2004, had in fact been meant for the ULFA.
Rehman also revealed that the ULFA military chief Barua himself had supervised the arms-smuggling operation.
During foreign minister Dipu Moni's visit to New Delhi last September, India and Bangladesh had reiterated their resolve to strengthen bilateral co-operation to deter terrorist activities.
In a joint statement, both sides also reiterated their resolve not to allow the use of their territories for activities inimical to each other's security interests.
Sources in the Indian ministry of home affairs, meanwhile, have said that interrogation of Choudhury and Hazarika might provide significant insights into the financing and international operations of ULFA, which investigators believe have in recent years become linked with global arms smuggling cartels.
am not talking about the news, i am talking about the twists Indians are giving it. Whereas the BD authorities are saying that arrested persons' identities are not confirmed yet.
