India mulls legal ways to extradite elusive ULFA chief Mukul Hazarika
Also Read: Why a doctor couple gave up their lives in Tamil Nadu for a poor, tribal settlement in Assam
The UK’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court, however, did not buy the argument of the Indian security establishment.
“I conclude that there is no admissible evidence that provides the essential identification that the defendant was the chairman of ULFA (I) or gave the speech at the training camp. I am satisfied that a tribunal of fact, properly directed, could not reasonably and properly find that the defendant was Asom or convict on the basis of the evidence,” the PTI reported quoting District Judge Michael Snow’s judgment.
Admitting that the judgment was a “temporary setback”, the NIA sources said it would look for further legal options for the extradition.
Dr Hazarika is wanted in India for “waging war against the Government of India, extorting money from government departments and private individuals and commission of terrorist attacks and other unlawful activities.”
NIA sources said after completing his MBBS degree from Gauhati Medical College in the early 1970s, Hazarika migrated to the UK and has been residing there since then.
Initially, he started as an ULFA sympathizer campaigning for the outfit in Europe and was also associated with the UK-based human rights group, Assam Watch, sources said.
His association with the ULFA deepened after he had a meeting with the outfit’s the then general secretary Anup Chetia at an UN-sponsored summit at Copenhagen in 1995. Chetia had reportedly attended the summit as an environmentalist from Bangladesh.
Little was, however, known about his alleged association with the ULFA until the outfit’s supremo Paresh Barua appointed an unknown entity Abhijit Asom as the insurgent group’s chairperson.
Soon Indian intelligence agencies turned their focus on establishing the real identity of the newly appointed ULFA chairperson.
Their investigations, based on interrogations of arrested ULFA cadres and analysis of e-mails sent by Asom to media houses, revealed his real identity.
After the NIA “revealed” the real identity of Asom, Barua issued press statements claiming Abhijit Asom was a ‘fictitious character’ who never existed, created by the Ulfa to confuse Indian security forces and intelligence agencies.
Barua further stated that photos of Asom that appeared in the media were that of Dr Hazarika, who has nothing to do with the ULFA.
