The government of Bangladesh yesterday handed over infamous Indian separatist leader Anup Chetia and two of his associates to the authorities of his country.
“Chetia has been in jail [in Bangladesh] for a long period. After his punishment period ended, he wished to go back to India. So, we have released him and he has already crossed the border,” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told the Dhaka Tribune over phone last evening.
Shree Laxmi Proshad and Babul Sharma are the two associates of Anup Chetia, one of the founders and general secretary of the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa).
Indian TV station Zee News yesterday reported that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had thanked his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina for handing over Chetia and her assistance in combating terrorism.
The Bangladesh home minister said the Ulfa leader, before going to India, gave an undertaking in writing that he was going back to India in full sense and under his own arrangements.
Asked how the handover took place, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said Chetia went to the border with his associates and crossed the border with help from Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) on this side and the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) on the other side. “If this is a handover, then it was so.”
Asked whether BGB had helped Chetia during the crossover, Mohosin Reza, public relations officer of BGB, said he was not aware of any such thing.
Asked if anyone had come to receive Chetia at the jail upon his release, the minister said: “Whenever any foreigner is released, we usually inform the relevant embassy.”
Is there any connection between his release and bringing back Narayanganj seven-murder prime suspect Nur Hossain from India? In reply Kamal said: “Whenever the Indian government wishes to send him back, he will be brought back.”
However, according to a source, sending back Anup Chetia and receiving Nur Hossain in return is an unconditional deal between the two countries.
Chetia is wanted for murders, abductions and extortion in India. He had been in Bangladesh since his arrest in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur on December 21, 1997.
Three cases were filed against him at that time: one for illegally staying in Bangladesh; another for keeping foreign currency; and the third for keeping a satellite phone. A Bangladesh court sentenced him to three, four and seven years in jail in the three cases respectively.
Since the tenure of his punishment ended in February 2007, he was kept in Rajshahi Jail as per a court directive. Since 2012, however, he has been at the Kashimpur jail in Gazipur.
During his stay in jail, Chetia sought political asylum from the Bangladesh government in 2003, 2005 and 2008.
India has been pressing Bangladesh for deportation of Chetia for several years.
When contacted, Brig Gen Sayed Iftekhar Uddin, inspector general of prisons, told the Dhaka Tribune over phone that they had released Chetia and his associates from the high security units of the Kashimpur Jail early yesterday and a two-member Indian delegation received them at the jail.
Neither the home minister nor the IG-prisons disclosed the time of his release.
However, according to a source, Chetia was released from Kashimpur around 2:30am and is believed to have crossed the Jakiganj border in Sylhet just before dawn.
According to jail sources, Chetia first expressed his interests to go back to India when JP Singh, an Indian diplomat posted in Dhaka, went to visit Kashimpur Jail in September 2012, apparently realising that he would not be given asylum.
In May 2013, Chetia sent a letter to the Bangladesh government through the jail authorities making official his wish to go back home along with his associates.
The official procedure of sending him back to India began after that. In January 2013, Bangladesh and India signed a prisoner exchange agreement.
With Chetia going back to India, almost all the top leaders of Ulfa are now in the custody of Indian security forces, except the separatist group’s military wing chief Paresh Barua.
Paresh’s name was included in a list of 14 people who were handed down death sentence by a special tribunal in Chittagong in December last year in the 10-truck arms haul case.
About a year ago, Indian media reported that Paresh is in China but his wife and kids now live in Dhaka. Bangladeshi authorities, however, have never said anything officially on this issue.
