[ALOCHONA] Menon came to warn Hasina of assassination plot

INDIAN MEDIA REPORTS
Menon came to warn Hasina of assassination plot
Courtesy Neew Age 19/4/09

Staff Correspondent

 

New Delhi has warned Dhaka of a possible assassination plot targeting the Bangladesh’s political leadership, including the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, during the April 12–13 surprise visit of Inida’s external affairs secretary Shiv Shanker Menon to the capital city.
   Quoting Indian home ministry sources, the Indian media, including the Indian Express and Anandabazar, on Saturday reported: New Delhi picked up intelligence on this in the form of ‘electronic chatter’ by terrorist groups active in the neighbourhood in recent weeks.
   The Indian Express reported there was specific intelligence on a plot to target the new Sheikh Hasina government in the conversations intercepted by Indian intelligence agencies.
   ‘Given the sensitivity of the information, Menon himself rushed to Dhaka to convey the information,’ it said.
   The Kolkata-based daily newspaper Anandabazar reported the US intelligence agency had also communicated, as India did, with Bangladesh over similar information that militants were targeting to kill top political leaders.
   Radical and terror groups in Bangladesh have been under pressure after Hasina’s government came to power early this year.
   During his second visit to Dhaka after the Awami League-led alliance had assumed office on January 6, 2009, India’s external affairs secretary met Sheikh Hasina, the foreign minister, Dipu Moni, the foreign secretary, Touhid Hossain, and the Bangladesh army chief, General Moeen U Ahmed.
   The Indian Express also mentioned as New Delhi and Dhaka had an agreement to share information on counter-terrorism, Menon exchanged notes with his counterpart on the activities of the radical groups operating in Bangladesh, which were suspected of playing a role in the killing inside the BDR headquarters in Dhaka.
   It said, ‘In the first high-level contact with Bangladesh after the February 25 BDR mutiny, India is believed to have emphasised the need to crack down on elements, which are aiming to destabilise peace and security in the two countries in particular and the region as a whole.’
   Both the dailies said New Delhi had feared the BDR plot was one of the ways to destabilise the newly-elected Hasina government, which has pledged to act against terror elements on its soil.
   ‘This is what is believed to have triggered these radical groups to plan an assassination,’ reports the Indian Express.
   Anandabazar, meanwhile, said Islamist outfits as well as anti-Indian elements such as the United Liberation Front of Assam were very much active to strain good ties between the two next-door neighbours as Sheikh Hasina took ‘tough stance’ against them.
   Referring to the Padua border skirmishes of April 2001 between the border guards of the two countries, the newspaper said the then chief of the Bangladesh Rifles Fazlur Rahman himself ordered his men to kill Indian border guards.
   ‘On that day [of border skirmishes between the BDR and the BSF], an activist of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh took international media representatives to that remote border. The people behind that conspiracy knew that if the news were circulated, India would react seriously that would ultimately create tense situation between the neighbours,’ it said.
   Anandabazar claimed after that incident, Skeikh Hasina immediately telephoned to the then Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and said ‘sorry at least 12 times’ in that single call for the untoward incident along the border.

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