Author: Our Correspondent
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: May 12, 2003
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030512/asp/nation/story_1960694.asp
India has handed Bangladesh a list
of 155 terrorist training camps operating there, many with the help of
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and al Qaida, and asked it to shut
them down.
Conveying its concern over some
Bangladeshi fundamentalist organisations' support to militants in the Northeast,
India also sought deportation of 85 insurgents at the foreign secretary-level
meeting and the one between the directors-general of the BSF and Bangladesh
Rifles recently, official sources said today.
The number of camps cited this time
- with pin-pointed locations - are 56 more than that furnished by Delhi
six months ago. These lists have been handed over despite Dhaka's repeated
denials of existence of training camps for Northeast insurgents in the
country.
"We have information that ISI activities
directed against India are on the rise in Bangladesh. ISI men, along with
al Qaida operatives, are imparting training at several of the camps," the
sources said.
Reports suggest that sophisticated
weapons are being smuggled into India from various places in Bangladesh,
including Cox's Bazaar, Sylhet and Chittagong, and ISI operatives are playing
a key role in this, they added.
"Even terrorists operating in Jammu
and Kashmir are also being sent via the Bangladesh border because its is
a (more) porous frontier than the western border," they said.
Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar
had raised an alarm last year when he submitted a list of 151 camps in
Bangladesh to the Union home ministry, saying unless these were eliminated,
insurgents would keep on striking terror at will.
Delhi's list mentions training camps
run by the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the All Tripura
Tigers' Force, the Ulfa, the Dima Halam Daoga, the Muslim United Liberation
Tigers of Assam and the National Democratic Front of Boroland of Assam,
the Achik National Volunteers' Council of Meghalaya, the People's Liberation
Army of Manipur and the NSCN (I-M) of Nagaland.
Among the insurgents from Assam,
Nagaland, Tripura and Manipur that India wants deported are top Ulfa leaders
Anup Chetia and Babul Sharma, the sources said.
Some of the others on the wanted
list are Bendage Wati, Chooba alias Madan, Tusi, Champa alias Chaoba, Kaning
Aum (all of the Ulfa), Sohan Debbarma and Ghanta Debbarma (of the Tripura
Tigers' Force), Saul Borok, Dhingro Debbarma, Makshod Morok, Saybam Debbarma
and Kumon Debbarma (of the NLFT).
