Indian rebel leaders arrested in Dhaka, reports say

Nov 5, 2009, 8:44 GMT

   New Delhi - A major separatist group in India's north-eastern state of Assam claimed Thursday that two of its senior leaders were arrested in Bangladesh and handed over to Indian authorities, news reports said.

   The banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) said the outfit's foreign secretary Sasha Choudhury and finance secretary Chitrabon Hazarika were picked up by Bangladeshi intelligence officials from a house in Dhaka on November 2, the IANS news agency reported.

   There was no confirmation from either Indian or Bangladeshi authorities.

   'Seven to eight people in civil clothes took the two leaders, saying the duo were being summoned for interrogation by senior officials,' ULFA's military spokesman Raju Baruah told local media via telephone and email, according to the IANS.

   'We are not aware of the whereabouts of our leaders but we suspect that they have been handed over to India and this is not acceptable as Bangladesh does not have an extradition treaty with India,' the PTI news agency quoted Baruah as saying.

   The ULFA, Assam's biggest separatist movement, has been fighting for an independent homeland since 1979. More than 15,000 people have lost their lives to the insurgency in the region in the past decade.

   India has repeatedly claimed that separatist militants in its north-eastern states were operating out of bases in Bangladesh with several of their leaders staying in safe houses in Dhaka.

   Bangladesh had earlier denied such allegations. But the Awami League government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed has assured New Delhi of its cooperation to evict Indian separatists from Bangladesh.

   Last month, Bangladeshi State Home Minister Shamsul Haque Tuku was quoted as saying that the government had directed the law enforcement agencies to crack down on ULFA bases in view of intelligence reports that the group was planning major strikes in Dhaka.

   Amal Das, a senior ULFA leader, was arrested by security forces in Dhaka last month as part of a crackdown, media reports from Bangladesh said.

   The group's leader, ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia, has been imprisoned in Bangladesh since 1997 due to the absence of any extradition agreement between the two countries, despite Delhi's repeated appeals to hand him over for trial in India.