Guwahati, December 02: The chairman of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Arabinda Rajkhowa has been detained in Bangladesh and efforts were on to get him deported to India, intelligence sources said on Wednesday.
Rajkhowa, 53, was picked up in Dhaka on Monday and was likely to be handed over to the Indian authorities along the Indo-Bangla border either in Tripura or in Assam soon, they said.
The detention was also confirmed by sources in the Union Home Ministry but they refused to elaborate any further.
Reports said ULFA’s publicity secretary Apurba Baruah has also been arrested by the Bangladesh police.
The Interpol had earlier issued a Red Corner Notice against the ULFA chairman.
Rajkhowa has reportedly been in favour of talks with the Central government.
Two other top ULFA leaders, self-styled Finance Secretary Chitrabon Hazarika and Foreign Secretary Sasha Choudhury were arrested in Bangladesh in November last and handed over to Assam police in whose custody they are lodged at present.
The arrests assume significance in view of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India slated later this month and also the signing of three proposed agreements, including the extradition treaty and another on combating international terrorism.
With Rajkhowa’s detention, ULFA is now left with only one leader — self-styled commander-in-chief Paresh Barua — who is yet to be nabbed.
Unlike Rajkhowa, Barua has been against talks with the Indian government except on the issue of sovereignty.
Rajkhowa, whose real name is Rajib Rajkonwar, is among four people who founded the separatist outfit on April 7, 1979.
The detained ULFA chairman is the son of a freedom fighter Umakanta Rajknowar, who died three years ago.
Accused in several cases, Rajkowa has been out of India since 1992 and is said to have lived in places including Myanmar and Bhutan.
However, Home Secretary GK Pillai and his Bangladesh counterpart Abdus Sobhan Sikder, who is currently in India, pleaded ignorance about Rajkhowa’s detention.
“Because I am away from the country, I don’t have such information till now,” Sikder told reporters when asked about the detention.
Pillai said: “We also have no official information on the arrest of Arabinda Rajkhowa in Bangladesh or anywhere else”.
Rajkhowa, 56, has been in Bangladesh for close to two decades, operating out of bases in that country to order hit-and-run strikes in Assam.
He founded the ULFA in 1979 along with five other leaders.
Earlier, while showing deep concern about talks with the militant outfit Home Minister P Chidambaram had said: “Frankly, in my assessment of the situation, talks with ULFA are leading nowhere and the reason is obvious. The reason is that Paresh Barua, Arvind Rajkhowa and Raju Barua are outside India. There are serious differences among them. We hope that those differences multiply and we hope that some of them will see reason.”
–Agencies