Home
+
Published : 03 Sep 2011, 01:48 PM
India has asked Bangladesh to fast-track the extradition of Abdul Rauf Daud Merchant, convicted of killing Bollywood music baron Gulshan Kumar in 1997, apart from insurgent leader Anup Chetia.
New Delhi is understood to have requested Dhaka to speed up the process for extradition of Merchant, as the case was still pending before the Bombay High Court due to the absence of the convict.
Merchant fled from India in March 2009 when he was on a 14-day parole. He was arrested by Bangladesh police in Brahmanbaria on May 28 that year.
Sources in New Delhi said that Indian home minister P Chidambaram had discussed the issue of extradition of Merchant when he had met his Bangladesh counterpart Shahara Khatun in Dhaka last July.
They also discussed about extradition of Chetia, general secretary of the Indian insurgent organisation United Liberation Front of Assam.
Though Dhaka and New Delhi do not have an extradition treaty, the two countries are expected to discuss such an agreement during Indian prime minister's two-day visit to Bangladesh beginning next Tuesday.
Mumbai police last Monday told a division bench of Bombay High Court that they needed some more time to get Merchant extradited from Bangladesh. The court was told that the Indian government was engaged in talks with Bangladesh to get him back to the country.
The division bench of justices V M Kanade and A M Thipsay was hearing an appeal filed by Merchant against his conviction as well as an application by the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra against the acquittal of 16 accused in the case.
The court granted police six weeks' time and deferred the hearing.
A court in Mumbai in April 2002 convicted Merchant, allegedly a contract sharpshooter, of killing Gulshan Kumar in 1997. Merchant, however, filed an appeal before a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court against his conviction.
Gulshan Kumar headed the well-known Indian music company T-Series, which was based in Mumbai. He was allegedly shot dead by Merchant and two others as soon as he came out of a temple in Andheri on Aug 12, 1997.
After a prolonged trial involving 19 accused including an underworld don, a business rival of Kumar and a runaway music director, Merchant was the only one to be convicted in April 2002.
After producing Merchant before Dhaka Metropolitan Police on May 30, 2009, senior police officers told journalists that he had sneaked into Bangladesh illegally and had been staying in Brahmanbaria.
Police officers had also said that he had apparently been sent by fugitive Indian underworld don Daud Ibrahim to expand his criminal network in Bangladesh.
