India to ask B'desh to handover Kandahar hijack accused

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna on Tuesday said the Indian government will be contacting the government of Bangladesh to seek the extradition of suspected Kandahar hijack accused and top Jaish-e Mohammed militant Nannu Mia alias Belal Mandol.

Krishna said New Delhi would move on the matter expeditiously after Mandol's admission that he had played a key role in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane IC-814 in 1999 from Kathmandu to Kandahar.

Mandol was arrested by security agencies in Dhaka along with four other militants near the Dhaka College, Bangladeshi officials have said.

Five operatives of the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, including its Pakistani coordinator in Bangladesh who was also a recruiter for operations in India, were nabbed in Dhaka, officials said on Sunday.

Of the five JeM activists, one is a Pakistani national while the remaining four are Bangladeshi citizens, said Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, assistant director of the elite Rapid Action Battalion.

The arrest of Belal, who claims to be a native of north Bangladeshi town Sylhet, along with Rezwan Ahmed is being considered as a major success by the local authorities.

A private television channel quoted RAB officials, as saying they had learnt that Nannu was imprisoned in Guwahati for about ten years, with more than four militancy-related cases pending against him in different courts in India.

Rezwan, 26, of Karachi, his two brothers Imazuddin alias Munna and Sadek Hossain alias Khoka and Abu Naser Munshi was arrested during the special anti-militancy drive.

RAB officials said Rezwan had confessed that he was JeM's regional coordinator and also a recruiting agent for conducting operations in India.

Rezwan, a fluent speaker in Hindi, Urdu, Bangla and English, was well trained to use handguns, sniper rifles, automatic weapons, light machine guns, heavy machineguns, RPGs and executing operations using explosives, officials said.

They said he was also skilled in planning suicide attacks at rail stations and trains.