India Denies That Hadi’s Killers From Dhaka Entered Indian Territory Through Meghalaya Border

Shillong: Barely hours after a senior officer of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) claimed that the killers of Bangladesh’s Inquilab Moncho leader Sharif Osman Hadi had entered India through the border with Meghalaya, India said that they are unfounded and misleading.

DMP officer S N Md Nazrul Islam had told reporters earlier in the day that Hadi’s killers had entered India through the Haluaghat border with the help of “local associates”.

O P Upadhyay, Inspector General, Border Security Force (BSF), Meghalaya Frontier, has refuted these claims.

“There is no evidence to suggest that any individual crossed the international border from the Haluaghat sector into Meghalaya. The BSF has neither detected nor received any report of such an incident,” Upadhyay said.

Islam had also told reporters that security agencies in India have detained the two persons who helped Hadi’s killers after they crossed over into India. A senior Meghalaya police officer said that there was “no input or intelligence to corroborate” the claim of the suspects’ presence in the Garo Hills region.

The local police units had not detected any such movement and coordination with central agencies was ongoing, the police officer said, as reported by PTI.

This clearly indicates that Dhaka is now attempting to implicate New Delhi for the murder of Hadi, who was a radical India baiter.

BSF officials have said that the personnel deployed along the international border have been kept on a high state of alert at all times to avert any untoward incident, particularly in view of the unrest and volatile situation prevailing in the neighbouring country.

The International Border in the sector was under constant surveillance and any attempt at illegal cross-border movement would be promptly detected and dealt with, the BSF said.

Hadi, 32, was shot in the head on December 12 during an election campaign in Dhaka. He was air-lifted to Singapore for advanced treatment but died of his injuries on December 18.

Hadi, spokesperson of Inquilab Moncho, was a prominent youth leader during the July-August 2024 mass street protests that led to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government last year.

Hasina told News18 in an interview that the street protests had been hijacked by radical elements, even as she was holding talks with the students.

Hadi was also a parliamentary candidate for the upcoming February 12 elections. The Dhaka Police had initially said that his killers had not managed to flee the country. Their stance seems to have changed after Hadi’s supporters laid a siege on Shaheen Bagh on Sunday and demanded action against his killers.