ULFA leader Anup Chetia may be extradited to India

In a Dhaka jail for the last 17 years, United Liberation Front of Asom leader Anup Chetia, will be extradited to India very soon, Bangladesh’s home secretary Mozammel Haque Khan said on Wednesday.

In a Dhaka jail for the last 17 years, United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) leader Anup Chetia, will be extradited to India very soon, Bangladesh’s home secretary Mozammel Haque Khan said on Wednesday.

“We have expressed our willingness to return him...he will be returned very soon,” said Haque Khan after a meeting with his Indian counterpart Anil Goswami.

The meeting between the two countries, which ended on Wednesday, decided that Chetia would be returned under a special mechanism beyond an existing extradition treaty.

On Tuesday, Bangladesh home ministry additional secretary Kamaluddin Ahmed had said that Chetia’s extradition had nothing to do with the case of Bangladeshi absconder Nur Hossain, the prime suspect in a multiple-murder case, who was arrested by West Bengal police recently.

Chetia, ULFA’s founder general secretary was arrested in Bangladesh in 1997. He has completed his prison term but is still in jail due to a Bangladeshi high court directive to keep him in safe custody until the government made a decision on his plea seeking political asylum in Bangladesh.