GUWAHATI, India: The commander of a powerful rebel movement in India’s remote northeast was arrested along with a top deputy, officials said on Friday, in a major blow to a separatist army already crippled by a string of arrests.
Indian officials said publicly that Arabinda Rajkhowa surrendered Friday. But security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the chairman of the United Liberation Front of Asom, or ULFA, was actually arrested a few days ago in Bangladesh, where he was long thought to be hiding. The exact date was unclear.
Because the two neighbors have no extradition treaty, he was informally handed over to Indian authorities, they said. Bangladeshi authorities denied arresting Rajkhowa. The details of the incident — which also included the capture of ULFA’s deputy military chief, a bodyguard, and seven relatives of the militants - were hazy. It was not clear if the arrests had been negotiated or if those detained were dropped off on the Indo-Bangladeshi border by authorities so they could be officially taken into custody inside India on Friday.
But the official account — with the militants detained as they wandered along a guarded frontier — appeared an unlikely scenario for the capture of a hardened rebel who has spent years evading India’s clutches.
The militants were “roaming about on the Indian side when our troopers came in contact with them, leading to their surrender,” said Ravi Gandhi, a spokesman for the Border Security Force.
