JOIN USIndia is keen to step up counter-terrorism cooperation with Bangladesh and has offered to ink with the neighbouring country a pact to help it fight the menace.
In the wake of recent back-to-back terror attacks in Bangladesh, New Delhi is set to renew its offer to Dhaka for a comprehensive framework agreement to give a fillip to bilateral counterterrorism cooperation, including in sharing of intelligence inputs and training of the neighbouring country’s security personnel in facilities in India.
Sources told the DH that India had first proposed to ink the agreement with Bangladesh during a meeting between home secretaries of the two governments early last year. The discussion on the agreement had not made much progress though, mainly because the focus of the bilateral discussion was on ratification and subsequent implementation of the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement and the additional protocol added to it in 2010, added the sources.
The deadly terror attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery at upmarket Gulshan area of Dhaka late on July 1, however, prompted India to contemplate proposing the agreement with Bangladesh again.
The seven terrorists killed 20 hostages and two policemen overnight before the commandos of the Bangladesh Army stormed into the eatery and gunned down six of them.
Just six days later, a woman and two policemen were killed and 13 were wounded in a bomb explosion and gun-battle near the venue of a mass prayer on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr at Sholakia in Kishoreganj district of the neighbouring country.