The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mamunur Rashid

ULFA leader Anup Chetia, has appealed to the UN to grant him refugee status and political asylum in a 'safe country' in the event of his release from prison.

"Spending 10 years and eight months in Bangladesh prison has taken its toll. I am craving for a normal existence. However, I appreciate that my life is not safe even in Bangladesh if I am allowed to leave the four walls of the prison safety," Chetia wrote in a letter to the Geneva-based United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Therefore, I am appealing to you for the kind and considered intervention of your esteemed office for granting me a refugee status and political asylum in a safe country," Chetia further wrote in the letter to UNHCR.

"I am being held in the Kashimpur Jail in the outskirts of Dhaka. The irony is that I am no longer a convict to be held in a jail as I had completed my seven years of imprisonment for entering Bangladesh illegally carrying foreign currencies and a satellite phone," he said in his letter to UNHCR High Commissioner Antonio Guterres.

"India has been pressurising Bangladesh government from the very beginning of my arrest in this country to hand me over to them. But as I have renounced my Indian nationality and there is no extradition treaty between the two countries, Bangladesh has so far rejected India's request," he wrote.