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Bangladesh hands over top separatist to India

Xinhua, November 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Bangladeshi government has handed over Anup Chetia, a detained top Indian separatist, to the Indian authorities.

A source close to Bangladesh's Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed this to Xinhua, saying the country Wednesday handed over the leader of the India's top insurgent group United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) after decades into his arrest in Dhaka for trespassing.

According to the source, Chetia, who was arrested in Dhaka in December 1997, along with two of his associates Lokkhi Prashad and Babul Sharma were handed over to the delegates of Indian High Commission from the Kashimpur Prison at Gazipur on the outskirts of capital Dhaka.

Talking to the journalists, Inspector General of Bangladesh Prisons Brigadier General Syed Iftekhar Uddin claimed that Chetia appealed to Bangladesh authorities via Indian embassy in Dhaka to be sent back to India.

"After clearance from both Bangladesh and India he was handed over to the Indian High Commission today (Wednesday Morning).

Chetia, general secretary of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a northeast Indian separatist group seeking to establish a sovereign Assam, was arrested in Bangladesh in 1997 and sentenced to seven years in jail for illegal entry and possession of firearms. As the jail term ended, he reportedly refused to return to India and sought for political asylum.

Since then he has been in custody though India had been pressing Dhaka for deportation of Chetia for several years.

Hours after Dhaka handed over the wanted terrorist to New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked her Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

The 48-year-old was wanted in India for killings, abductions, bank robberies and extortion, and he has been lodged in a jail in Dhakafor over two decades. Endit