Body of Lies

It sounds like David Ignatius’s 2008 blockbuster Hollywood film – Body of Lies. Yet, it’s not so as complicated as it should be in the film. Now, it is true that the ‘self-appointed front-runner’ for a permanent UNSC seat is playing a hypocritical double-standard when it comes to human rights and its outlook towards the other nations.

RK Sanayaima, chairman, UNLF

The contention might be a little critical to those who are so professed themselves in the idea of India, but what they do not know is the path they follow is dangerous and loom to self-destruction.

Over the last few weeks, there is a lot of debate, sit-in protests against the sudden disappearance of a prominent insurgent leader of northeast India, who was actually or allegedly kidnapped by sleuths of intelligence agencies of India and Bangladesh from an area of Bangladesh city, Dhaka. According to a BBC report, RK Meghan alias Sanayaima, chairman of the outlaw organisation – United National Liberation Front (UNLF) was arrested from Dhaka by a joint team of RAW agents and their Bangladeshi counter parts on September 29 this year. The arrest was further confirmed by a press communiqué of the outfit itself, an investigative report by Delhi-based Tehelka magazine, and by one Dhaka-based political organisation - the Communist Party of Bangladesh. The reports also gave further inputs that he was flown to Delhi by RAW agents.

In the face of growing demands of his whereabouts and expressed anger by public of Manipur and political parties, the self-professed Government of India has finally made up its mind that it couldn’t conceal for so long, and says now the UNLF leader was actually arrested from Motihari district of Bihar, which is border to Nepal that he was arrested “while trying to sneak into the Indian territory from Nepal”.

The question is not to ask how and why a rebel leader was arrested, but how it staged a well-known action that has already become in the public domain. One can’t deny to the fact that he is/was a wanted man for the government or whatever it may be, yet, you can't fool all the people all the time. And how would you argue, how would prove in the international fora that he was not at all arrested from Dhaka, but from a little known place, where he might even never known in his lifetime.

Another point is why the government kept him for so long, without any formal statement about his arrest and whereabouts either to the state Government or to his family. For that matter, Government needs to answer: Did the concerned authority give any arrest memo at the time of his arrest? Why the Government kept silent for two months and why wasn’t he produced within 24 hours to a nearest police station after his arrest?

If it is the case, the Government of India had violated Article No. 3, 5.6.7.8.9.10, 14, 19, 20 and 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Right Article No. 19-22 and 23-24 of the Indian constitution.