By Jay Shankar
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- India and Bangladesh ended talks aimed at strengthening their ties by reaching an accord to jointly combat terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking, and agreeing to cooperate on prisoners and criminal law.
The agreements are scheduled to be signed during Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India on Dec. 18, Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and his Bangladeshi counterpart, Abdus Sobhan Sikder, told reporters in New Delhi, state-run All India Radio reported.
The South Asian neighbors will speed up verification of the nationalities of prisoners in their jails and enable repatriation of people who have completed their sentences, the home secretaries said. Indian and Bangladeshi officials will also assist each other legally in criminal matters, they said.
Militant groups active in northeastern India, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, are operating out of Bangladesh, the Indian government said. Anti-Indian Muslim insurgents use more than 140 camps in Bangladesh, according to the Border Security Force.
Arabinda Rajkhowa, chairman of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam, may have been arrested in Bangladesh and is likely to be handed over to Indian authorities, the Press Trust of India reported today, citing intelligence officials whom it didn’t identify.
Lists of Suspects
The countries on Aug. 25 last year exchanged lists of terrorism suspects who were on the run. The Bangladesh Rifles supplied a list of 1,464 people wanted as criminals and India provided the names of 263 suspects.
Terrorist groups based in Pakistan and Bangladesh were working together and crossing the Bangladeshi border to carry out attacks on Indian territory, India’s frontier security force had said. Bangladesh’s government has denied that the country is a haven for militants who target India. India and Bangladesh share a 4,053-kilometer (2,519-mile) border.
Settlement of boundary disputes will be expedited and both the nations will help each other to fight against people involved in the trafficking of women and children along the border, according to the All India Radio report.