India Backed Shanti Bahini, Burmese Rebels: Book

Indira Gandhi was voted out of power in 1977, just when India's external intelligence organisation, R&AW, was preparing to substantially step up its backing for the Shanti Bahini, says Subir Bhaumik in his just-released book "Troubled Periphery:Crisis of India's Northeast".

Bhaumik, a journalist and academic researcher for three decades, has provided graphic details of the R&AW's involvement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Burma's Kachin Hills in his latest book. But he makes it clear the "orders came right from the top" and were not operations generated by the agency.

"The immediate provocation for the Indian sponsorship of the Shanti Bahini guerrillas .. was the military coup that killed Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and many members of his family. To Indira gandhi, this coup was a political defiance of India .

"Within a week of the coup, senior R&AW leaders arrived in Tripura's capital Agartala with a clear brief for their subordinates: Get
those Chakma leaders who want to fight Bangladesh."

Bhaumik's findings is based on detailed interviews of Shanti Bahini guerrilla commanders and R&AW officials and the book is replete with such references.

One Shanti Bahini leader tells Bhaumik about the quality of Indian training.

"The Indian training was intensive and tough as the instructors had served with military units in Nagaland and Mizoram. The leadership element of the course was gruelling and involved war games and dummy attacks.

"The instructors would observe how we went about the attack and whether we had absorbed the theoretical lessons. They would severely admonish us if we were found lacking. They always reminded us of the maxim that you bleed less in war if you train well in peace."

Indira Gandhi's election defeat in 1977 saved Bangladesh, then grappling with mutinies and domestic unrest, from huge trouble, suggests Bhaumik.

"Just when the Shanti Bahini were told to prepare for the big push forward and that India would support a strength of 15000 guerrillas came the news of Mrs Gandhi's election debacle and the Congress defeat...

"It is not clear how far Mrs Gandhi wanted to go and it is possible that, after the liberation of Bangladesh, she could see the value of a successful foreign campaign could boost her dropping popularity back home.

"But her defeat changed the course of events . The R&AW plans to intensify the guerrilla war in Chittagong Hill
Tracts were put on hold when Morarji Desai took over as Prime Minister. The R&AW topbrass were categorically told to lay off from CHT."

Bhaumik's book says the support to Shanti Bahini was resumed when Mrs Gandhi came back to power--but by then, the Bahini was in the throes of a fratricidal war that led to the assasination of its chief M N Larma.

It says that R&AW's Agartala station chief at that time, Parimal Ghosh even resolved this fratricidal conflict by drafting an agreement between the two Shanti Bahini factions.

Ghosh in 1971 was close to General (then Major) Ziaur Rahman and operated under his pseudonym Captain Hossain Ali.

As a BSF officer, he fought at the Shuvapur bridge with the Mukti Fauj.

Bhaumik also details how the R&AW won over the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and started giving them weapons -- just to ensure they would not back any Northeast Indian rebel groups anymore.

The man instrumental in this operation was one of the most successful R&AW operatives , B.B.Nandi, who had also served as their station chief in Dhaka.

During Nandi's tenure as station chief at Bangkok, he developed close links with the Burmese underground groups, specially the Kachins.

Bhaumik says that Nandi even planted a R&AW communications team at the KIA headquarters in the early 1990s, from where they monitored the China-bound movements of the northeast Indian rebels .

After retirement, Nandi became a fierce critic of the R&AW and the Indian government when Delhi started befriending Burma's military junta and the BNP-Jamaat combine in Dhaka.

Bhaumik's book , published by Sage, details the major issues of conflict in northeast India -- land,language, leadership, ethnicity, ideology , religion -- and offers a policy framework for resolving the crisis.

It says the region suffers from severe "democracy and development deficit" and argues that a secular and democratic Bangladesh and a truly federal and democratic Burma is crucial to the stability of India's Northeast. 

Source :

Ulfa Arrests : Whither Sovereignty???

With the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) already in place ensuring people's access to information from public authorities as a right guaranteeing transparency and comprehensibility, the incumbent government agencies and operatives including some ministers seem to obscure and obfuscate vital matters concerning national sovereignty in contravention of the RTI Act's affirmed legal provisions.


When info or disclosure is held back, it spawns wild conjectures leading to labyrinthine enigma of confusion --- much to the nation's chagrin, and even peril. Contravening the RTI Act the government's smokescreen over the issue of the recent arrests and handing over of the clandestine terror outfit members of the 'seven sisters' states of India is being viewed as a great faux pas.


Recently the Indian media have credited the Bangladesh law enforcing agencies regarding the arrest of no less than three major leaders of the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom ( ULFA), including its chief Arabinda Rajkhowa, since November 1.


The Detective Branch ( DB) of Bangladesh police arrested Arabinda in the capital on December 1.


The DB also arrested the chairman of the National Liberation Front of Tripura, Biswamohan Debbarma, along the border at Kamalganj, some 160 km northeast of Dhaka.


These four persons were handed over to the Indian authorities, according to the Indian media report. Reportedly, some high officials of the Bangladesh law enforcement agency in question have confirmed the arrests and subsequent handover, but the government has swung between silence and total denial, which engendered hearsay and speculation, thus making people concerned as well as disturbed.


What is more, there is no extradition treaty between the two countries. Extradition denotes delivery of a person, suspected or convicted of a crime, by the state where he has taken refuge to the state that asserts jurisdiction over him. Its purpose is to prevent criminals who flee a country from escaping punishment.


However, international law does not recognise extradition as an obligation in the absence of a treaty. Whilst the Indian media broke the news of the arrests of the ULFA leaders in Bangladesh and subsequent handover to the Indian authority, Dhaka remained tight-lipped over the subject. The foreign minister evaded reporters' question relating to Rajkhowa's arrest. As expected, the government's secretiveness at that time caused doubt as to whether it was involved in covert operations.


Afterwards the home minister, Sahara Khatun, stated that the ULFA chief "was not arrested in Bangladesh" and the news given in the Indian media report was incorrect.


Khatun's statements intend to imply that the Bangladesh law enforcement authorities have not made the arrests. Now, will it not be cogent for the body politic to deduce that the Indian law enforcement agencies were involved in their arrest on Bangladesh soil? Undeniably, it is tantamount to impingement on the country's sovereignty.

What is more, if the Indian media reports of the arrests and handover to New Delhi are true, then is the Bangladesh government doing the Indian government's bidding by obeying diktat of a foreign country?


In the absence of an extradition treaty between Dhaka and Delhi -- which will require India to reciprocate by extraditing several hundred Bangladeshi most wanted underworld lords hiding in India for years --- this is not legally or ethically acceptable. Since 1979 India's north-eastern region has been the hotbed of insurgency and fierce armed conflict killing a large number of people.


Over the years about 20 ,000 people have died in Christian-dominated Nagaland alone. The Indian media reports tend to suggest that the Bangladesh government may have already taken a side in the conflict, favouring the Indian government and against the northeast Indian people. In that terrifying decades old strife it will be most dangerous for Bangladesh take any side.


Hence Dhaka must not allow herself to be caught up in the turmoil [in which various parties from Maoists to ISI are said to be the stakeholders] because such an involvement can unavoidably incite and provoke the rebels to open a battlefront targeting Bangladesh and endangering her security. More importantly, the government must not forget the most vital concept of our nationhood -- - sovereignty. The onus is on the government to clarify in detail if it has not compromised the country's sovereignty.

Manipuri Activist Interviewed

With the planned Tipaimukh Dam putting 70 million people "at risk" in northeast India and Bangladesh, people of the region must co-ordinate efforts to safeguard sustainable development in the face of such projects, says veteran Indian campaigner Anastasia Cristalina Pinto. Pinto, executive director of the Centre for Organisation Research and Education (CORE) in Manipur, told bdnews24.com, during a recent visit to Dhaka, the contentious dam also threatens to heighten existing tensions between the Indian government and ethnic groups in Manipur. The CORE focuses on policy research and advocacy on the rights of the indigenous and tribal communities.


Environmental pressure groups in both Bangladesh and Manipur state have been voicing strong concern over the potential impact of the planned Indian dam in downstream areas. The people of Manipur, and other northeastern states, are "justifiably unhappy" with the Indian government's development approach in the region, says Pinto, who has been working for the past two decades throughout India, including the northeast, on the vital role of local communities in sustainable development. India says the dam would not withhold water from Bangladesh as it is part of a power generation project and not intended for irrigation purposes. Pinto said, there were more than 70 million people "at risk" from the project. "Not only in the northeast, but if you take the adjacent regions into consideration." "Where is the international community? Where are the human rights groups, environmentalists and development activists, where are the donors? What are they doing?" She called on the international community to help in "preventative action", not to wait until it was "too late".


 Cumulative impact "Because we are not talking about only one dam; we are talking about the cumulative impact of several such interventions," said Pinto. She mentioned "future dams" along with "proposed uranium mines, the Trans-Asia highways and railways ... to be built in one of the most ecologically and seismically sensitive zones in the world." "There is very little assessment of cumulative future impacts. That is my concern," said the Manipur-based activist. She said the Indian government has estimated just 1300 families will be displaced for the Tipaimukh dam. "But then you calculate the displacement cost of the pan-Asian highway, railway, proposed mines and all the support and ancillary infrastructure that has to come up in order to support these." "Now let's talk about how many people are being displaced." "Let us look at the larger picture, what are the implications of such large scale displacement and reconstruction of environment and physical geography of such a sensitive zone on the outline areas. Nobody has calculated that," says Pinto.


"This is a disaster prone region already, now we are going to multiply that many times. For the last 30 years, this region, from the Bay of Bengal to the Himalayas, has also been experiencing growing impact of climate change. Now we are going to throw all this in to that basket." 'Bangladesh should join us' "I think Bangladesh should try and cooperate with some of us to actually find the way of assessing what is the cumulative impact of this entire development programme taken together. Because nothing less than that is needed." She suggested a co-operative non-government, scientific, bilateral board from northeast India and Bangladesh to assess the cumulative impact of "an entire range of projects" in the region over the next ten to fifteen years.


 "Local people do not want this dam. They have been forced to deal with it. At some point the feat of the government of India becomes like an act of God, which we cannot protest. It is beyond our capacity to do anything more. Because we are a small population already suffering from ... consequences of conflict. I am not saying anything very revolutionary; we have made complaints in this regard to various UN agencies and the human rights mechanism." But, said Pinto, in the last few years international support for the northeast has decreased. "We are not asking the people to make a decision or assessment, we are asking for people to make a truly scientific investigation into the impact of these projects cumulatively taken together on a zone such as the northeast and its outlying areas," said Pintu. 'Heightened tensions' Pinto's concern is also for Manipur's long-standing issues, including armed insurgency by separatist groups and inter-ethnic conflict that have recently come to the fore with protests against the Tipaimukh Dam project. The dam will heighten existing tensions between the central government and ethnic groups in the northeast state, she says. "Of course it will accelerate conflicts. It's not something unique in the northeast where resources become appropriated by corporations or by large projects. Conflicts are escalating and proliferating. In the northeast we already have 106 or 108 armed groups," she told bdnews24.com. Long-simmering tensions exist between the Indian government and people of the remote northeastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland, known collectively as the 'seven sisters'. Much of the region, connected to the rest of India by a narrow strip of land known as the Siliguri Corridor, is ethnically and culturally different from the rest of India. The states have long accused New Delhi of ignoring the issues that concern them, plundering resources and doing little to improve their lives. "Conflict is going to increase unless the government of India completely reverses its approach," said the development activist. "Conflict between armed groups in India, conflict between armed groups with each other, all these are going to intensify and multiply due to the kind of development pathways ... being adopted by the Indian government and in collaboration with others governments in the region who are not prepared to say no," she said.

The "Settlers" And "Aborigines" Of Chittagong Hill Tract

The subject of minorities is a very touchy one in any country, especially in nation-states where a national heritage or culture or identity (often dictated by the majority population) defines the characteristic of the state. Such modern concepts of states get complicated if there are other minorities that live in the state, each claiming to be a separate "nation" by virtue of its religion, language, culture, etc.

Bangladesh has about 12% religious minorities, including approximately 10% Hindus, the remainders being Buddhists, Christians, agnostics, atheists and animists. Roughly one percent of the population lives in the high hills, e.g., Jayintia, Garo Hills and Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT) districts. Historically the Bengal delta was husbanded by people who resorted to wet cultivation while the people in the hills, who were outside tax collection from ruling authorities, resorted to dry cultivation for their staple food. In the olden days of the Mughal rulers the authority of the state sometimes ended where the hills began. As we all know it was the marauding attacks from the Maghs (Arakanese Buddhists) and Portuguese pirates, which were sponsored by the Buddhist Kings of Arakan that led to Shaista Khan's campaign to re-conquest Chittagong and its hilly districts, ensuring these territories' sovereignty within the Mughal rule. His campaign stopped shy of the present-day Arakan that demarcated itself from Bangladesh by the Naaf River. During the subsequent Nawabi rule of Bengal and British Raj the territorial boundary remained the same, i.e., both those districts remained integral to Bengal and outside Buddhist rules of Arakan, Burma and Tripura.

Unlike the Mughal and Muslim Sultanates of Bengal, the British Raj (especially during the Company era) was more interested about collection of revenue and had little concern about the goodwill of the local people and their legitimate grievances whether or not such taxes were burdensome. It was their heavy handedness that led to the horrible famine of 1769-1773 (corresponding to Bangla Year 1176-1180, and more commonly therefore known as "Chiatturer monontor") killing some 15 million people of Bengal (that included Bihar and Orissa). One in every three person perished in that great famine.

During the British Raj a more drastic and concerted effort was taken to reclaim hilly areas under taxation. In order to increase revenue collection, the Raj created local tribal chiefs in the Hilly districts, Rajas, who would ensure payment of such revenues. For the planes, it had by the 19th century already instituted a similar scheme of collecting revenues from the zamindars (not to be forgotten in this context the Sunset Law), who essentially became the enforcer of collecting such revenues in the form of money or kind (e.g., paddy) from the raiyats - peasants, and petty merchants. That is, the role of the zamindars was similar to a revenue collector in modern times.

The CHT districts with their deep forests, much like many other hilly parts of pre-modern era India, often became refuges to rebels and revenue- and tax-evaders who would settle (without its true connotation) there to escape from being hunted down by the ruling authority. In 1784 in the nearby Arakan there was a massive genocidal campaign that was steward-headed by the racist Buddhist king of Burma—Bodaw Paya—who had invaded the independent state. Arakan - the land of poets Alaol and Dawlat Kazi - had a significant population of Muslims (commonly known as the Rohingya people) who had lived in the other side of the Naaf River for centuries. [As shown elsewhere by this author, the origin of the Rohingya people of Arakan pre-dates the settlement of the Tibeto-Burman people there]. The genocidal campaign by the Buddhist king led to a mass scale forced eviction and exodus of hundreds of thousands of people of Arakan to the nearby territories of British India, especially to Chittagong and CHT districts of today's Bangladesh. Nearly a hundred thousand people, mostly Muslims, were killed by the Burmese extermination campaign. The Mahamuni statue of Buddha itself was stolen away from the Arakan. Many Muslims were taken as slaves and forced to live elsewhere, e.g., in places like the Karen State of Burma.

Those Rohingya Muslims who were able to save themselves from Burmese annexation of Arakan, like many Magh Arakanese, settled mostly in the Chittagong and CHT districts. The Muslim refugees and their descendants that had lived and settled in those places came to be known by the local name Ruhis, depicting their Rohingya/Arakan origin. During the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26, Arakan and subsequently the vast territories of Burma came under the British Rule. The exiled Rohingya/Ruhi Muslims and Maghs of Arakan, and their descendants, were allowed and encouraged to resettle in those territories south of the Naaf River.

While many did return, others remained behind in Chittagong and CHT districts. The British policy and the subsequent process of return of the Arakanese exiles, especially the hard-working wet cultivating Rohingya people, facilitated the cultivation of vast territories within Burma, which had hitherto remained barren and uncultivable. This enriched the coffer of the British Government through collection of revenues and taxes.

Many descendants of the exiled Rohingyas (or Ruhis of Chittagong) would also become seasonal labourers in Arakan.

Today, the bulk of the ethnic minorities that live in the Chittagong Hill Tract districts are the descendants of those fleeing refugees from Arakan who fled the territory during Bodaw Paya's extermination campaign. They are our Chakma and Marma people. (There are two other ethnic minority groups living in the CHT - the Kukis and the Tripuras. The former are also known as the Chins in Burma and Mizo in India; while the latter lives mostly in the Tripura state of India.) Their history to the territory cannot be traced with any authenticity before that historical event of 1784. This does not mean that there was no migration of people over the hills; in fact, there was migration in those days of porous borders where geography was not often attached with politics, state and administration. Like any nomadic people, the hilly people had no permanent settlement to the territory - they moved to and fro between porous borders of today's Bangladesh, Tripura (India) and Burma. Their migration from outside, much like the Ruhis of Chittagong and CHT, cannot be traced before 1784.

Since the British rule of the territories dating back to 1826, many Bengali Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have moved to the CHT for a plethora of reasons, including administrative jobs, logging, trade and commerce, a trend that was to continue well unto the Bangladesh period with development of industrial infrastructure there.

After the emergence of Pakistan in 1947, the CHT was made part of East Pakistan. During the War of Liberation, its Raja (Tridib Roy) openly aligned himself with the Pakistan regime, thus leaving a strong sense of betrayal and mistrust between the local Bengali or Chittagonian people and the Hilly people. During the war of liberation and in the post-liberation era, many Bengalis were kidnapped and killed by the extremist elements of the Hilly people. [A relative of mine was one such casualty who was kidnapped and later presumably killed, never to be found later.] Crimes of this nature continued unabated making the territory unsafe and insecure. Outside the towns, there was virtually no functioning of the government. The territory became impassable and unliveable for most Chittagonian and Bengali speaking people. They would be kidnapped, and often times killed.

The Shanti Bahini comprising of armed hilly extremist rebels demanded autonomy and they were aided and armed by anti-Bangladeshi forces from outside. With the assassination of Skheikh Mujib, as the political scene changed drastically inside Bangladesh, the Shanti Bahini had a new sponsor - India - to destabilize the country. This led to tense situation between the government of Bangladesh and the Hilly people, leading to the deployment of the BDR and Army. The era of instability persisted during the military-supported governments of Zia and Ershad when hundreds of soldiers and officers died fighting against the rebels in the hills.

After the overthrow of the quasi-military government of Ershad, the situation improved somewhat, especially with the signing of peace treaty in 1997 under the first Hasina administration which stipulated total and firm loyalty towards the country's sovereignty and integrity for upholding the political, social, cultural, educational and economic rights of all the people living in the hilly region. Unfortunately because of its demography and geography, the region continued to see infiltration of arms from outside, which inevitably have gone to forces that are destabilizing the region. Thus, even to this day, criminal hilly gangs who are opposed to the peace treaty and armed by anti-Bangladeshi governments and NGOs continue to harass the local police, BDR and military outposts, and kidnap and kill Bengali-speaking population, including members of the local and foreign NGOs that work on various projects aiming to improve the economic and social condition there.

In the last two decades, the CHT has also seen the incursion of narcotics and harmful drugs from Burma and India. Outside drug-traffickers, the territory has also become a natural hideout for many refugees and secessionist groups from Burma that are opposed to the SPDC oligarchy.

In recent years some NGOs have emerged with ulterior motives that are at odds with aspirations of the people and territorial integrity of Bangladesh. No place offers them a better venue than the Hilly Districts where a sizable number of ethnic minorities live. They want withdrawal of Bangladesh Army that has preserved the territorial integrity. They want enactment of laws that would confine a particular ethnic or religious group into living in enclaves or reserves. They want forced removal of Bengali Muslims and Hindus from the hilly districts. It goes without saying that such demands are unrealistic and are sure recipes for dismemberment of Bangladesh. Their anti-Bangladesh activities are also bolstered by some human rights activists with foreign affiliations whose agenda includes weakening the sovereignty of Bangladesh. Not to be forgotten in this context are also some local players that are opposed to the current government. The latest unrest in the CHT may well fall into their scheme to destabilize the government.

As Bangladesh government renews its pledge for harmony, territorial integrity and stability, it cannot afford to appear weak against forces that threaten its very existence. Any measure that offers exclusion over inclusion, ghettoization over pluralism, discrimination over equal opportunity is undesirable and must be avoided.

As hinted earlier, economics has been a key driver shaping the demography within our planet. And Bangladesh (whose GDP owes much to the foreign remittance of her people working overseas) with scarcity of land is no exception to that grand rule. In the post-liberation period, with the sharp growth of job opportunities within the hilly districts, some Bangladeshis have settled into the CHT. Many hilly people likewise have found jobs in the planes of Bangladesh, away from their traditional homes in the hills. This is quite natural for a country whose constitution allows for pursuit of freedom of movement, employment, economic prosperity and happiness for all. With a high fertility rate among Bengalis and Ruhis, it is no accident that they are a majority in some Hilly districts today.

The Hilly people are aware of these trends and have immensely benefited from the overall economic prosperity of the region. Most of them are against the extremists within their community. They also understand that they are the best protectors and preservers of their language and heritage, something that is becoming rather difficult for small minorities in a global economy of our time. In that balancing act between preserving cultural heritages and ripping the benefits of economic prosperity they would be better advised to follow the American/Canadian Amish/Mennonite example as opposed to that of the Native Americans living in the Indian reservations.

In closing, to qualify as an aborigine a member of an indigenous people must exist in a land before invasion or colonization by another race. More stringent definitions require that the aborigines have resided in a place from time immemorial; i.e., they are the true sons and daughters of the soil. From this definition, the Koori, Murri, Noongar, Ngunnawal, Anangu, Yamatji, Nunga and other aboriginals in Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China, the Chechens in Chechnya of Russia; the Siberian Tatars, Khanty, Mansi, Nenets and Selkup people of Siberia in Russia; the Native Indians of the USA and Canada, Eskimos of Canada and few other races in Central and South America are the true aborigines (or more correctly, aboriginals) of our world.

It is not difficult to understand why the British anthropologist T.H. Lewin (1839-1916) did not consider the tribal people living in CHT as aborigines. The brief analysis above also confirms that view. Thus, the Mongoloid-featured hilly people are as much settlers to the CHT as are the Chittagonians/Ruhis and other Bangladeshis living there. Calling these latter people "settlers" while calling the Mongoloid featured Hilly people as the "adibashis" or aborigines would be false and insincere! Simply put: all the people living in the CHT are the adhibashis (residents) there.

Handing Over Indian Citizens And Some Questions

With historical commonality since the days of yore, geographical affinity and familiar cultural traits, India remains our closest neighbour. In 1971 Pakistan Army's genocide and other brutalities caused the worst mass exodus from Bangladesh --- close to 99 hundred thousand --- to neighbouring India. In Tripura, refugees outnumbered local inhabitants. An enormous influx of such a scale had naturally been a colossal burden on the Indian economy and took India some months to provide refugees shelter in improvised refugee camps. More importantly, our youths were trained to join resistance as Freedom Fighters. These are all historical facts acknowledged by us. Thus during the Liberation War, India was our greatest friend in need which we always remember with gratitude.

But after independence India could not keep it up in so far as bilateral relations with her closest neighbour Bangladesh are concerned. The developments that unfolded since the early seventies regarding the big neighbour's attitude were not pleasant. The issues are many beginning from depriving co-riparian Bangladesh of the legitimate share of the Ganges water, maritime boundary demarcation, greater plan to divert waters of the 54 common rivers, the Tipaimukh dam threat, frequent shooting down of Bangladeshis by the BSF, a sustained media campaign against this country and so on.

Over the years India has been accusing that dozens of fugitive insurgents from Assam and adjoining states were hiding in this country. Recently two insurgents have been captured. India's The Hindu, in a story datelined Guwahati, November 7, reported that two top leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) - Sashadhar Choudhury and Chitraban Hazarika --- were produced before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, by the Special Operation Unit of the Assam police. India and Bangladesh do not have any extradition treaty; hence the process of handing over each other's wanted criminals had always been cumbersome. The ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia, arrested in 1997 in Dhaka, is yet to be handed over to India due to legal complications.

Home minister Sahara Khatun indirectly admitted the action saying strong collaboration among the South Asian courtiers should be forged to root out the causes of militancy. "Our countries must engage in regional cooperation to counter terrorism," she told a workshop of South Asian Task Force on anti-terrorism held in Dhaka. The gesture is appreciable as insurgents are causing trouble to the Indian authorities. But beneath the surface---as they claim---are long stories of injustice done to the people of that region. Leaders of these outfits have reportedly appealed to the Bangladesh government and the people explaining their struggle while reminding that they had extended support to the Bangladesh people when they were on the run from the Pakistani occupation forces during 1971 liberation war. They said, they are now going through the same ordeal and look upon the Bangladesh government and its people to extend similar support to their leaders.

Now the question has been raised here whether or not the Indian detectives or undercover agents arrested the two ULFA terrorists and took them away to Assam. A BBC report later confirmed they were pushed back under the cover of an understanding. But the question is how could it happen in the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries?

And what about the Bangladeshi gangland lords in India who have caused great damage to us? Have they been handed over to Bangladesh government? According to police records, from 2003 to 2007, as many as 18,994 people were murdered in four years alone and those gangsters now in India are said to be responsible for those murders through their followers in Bangladesh for failing to pay ransom or other demands.

In sum, a good neighbour is a great blessing. There is no doubt that as a neighbour Bangladesh certainly and definitely cherishes lasting friendly relations with India based on understanding and cooperation for mutual benefit. But the way the two ULFA rebels were allowed to be nabbed in Dhaka and smuggled out to India gives rise to a lot of questions that call for answers. .