Dhaka launches initiative to repatriate ultra-right leader's assailants from India

Dhaka, Mar 9 (PTI) Bangladesh on Monday said they have launched an initiative to repatriate two suspected assailants accused of killing student leader Sharif Osman Hadi, a day after Indian police said they were arrested from West Bengal as they entered the country illegally.

"Initiatives have been taken to extradite the two accused," Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told reporters at northwestern Cox’s Bazaar on Monday.

In a separate media briefing in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s police chief or inspector general (IGP) Mohammad Ali Hossain Fakir said diplomatic efforts were underway to bring back the suspects - Faisal Karim Masud and Alamgir Hossain.

Hadi, 32, spokesperson of Inqilab Moncho and a staunch India critic, who rose to national prominence during the July-August 2024 mass protests that led to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League regime, was shot in the head on December 12 during an election campaign in Dhaka.

Hadi was also a parliamentary candidate for the upcoming February 12 elections. He was airlifted to Singapore for treatment but died on December 18.

Motorbike-mounted masked assailants shot him when his supporters visibly unleashed a reign of terror, burning to ashes two left-leaning or moderate cultural groups, Chhayanat and Udichi, founded in the 1960s, alongside the mass circulation Prothom Alo and Daily Star newspapers.

West Bengal police on Sunday said they arrested two Bangladeshi nationals accused of murdering Hadi, who was also vying as an independent candidate for the February 12 elections, as they allegedly entered India illegally.

Bangladesh police at that time alleged Hadi’s killers fled to India while Muhammad Yunus-led then interim regime had expressed a firm commitment to expose the killers to justice, while Indian authorities then rejected the claim about Hadi's murderers’ entry into their territory.

Bangladesh-India ties saw their lowest ebb during the Yunus regime, while the killing further strained the bilateral relations.

Police in West Bengal said preliminary interrogation of the detained suspects in their custody suggested they were involved in Hadi's murder.

In a statement, they said there was "secret credible information" that the pair had fled their country and illegally taken shelter in a border area with the intention of crossing back into Bangladesh.

The Indian acknowledgement came as Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) assumed office on February 17 drawing an end to the 18-month interim government rule. PTI AR AMS