Assassination Attempt On Sheikh Hasina, Reportedly Masterminded By ISI, Foiled With Help From India

Top counter terror officers of Bangladesh managed to foil an assassination attempt on their Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the nick of time last month with the help of her loyalists bodyguard, according to a CNN-News18 report by Subir Bhaumik and Manoj Gupta.

Six to seven personnel from Hasina’s security detail were supposed to gun her down on the evening of 24 August as soon as she came out of her meeting for an evening walk. The attack was being coordinated with Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants “who were supposed to trigger a series of blasts around Hasina’s office to divert the attention of the other security guards, and to provide an escape route to the assassins.”

However, the sinister plan was nipped in the bud thanks to efforts of a joint team of Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence officers. They intercepted the communication between JMB militants and the bodyguards of Hasina who were entrusted with the job of killing her. This was designed exactly how Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination was carried out by her own bodyguards.

The CNN-News18 reports quotes top Bangladeshi intelligence officials who suspect Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to be the main mastermind of the attack. “It all began when ISI’s Brigadier Ashfaq, in-charge of eastern operations, met a top opposition leader from Bangladesh in London two months ago,” the report quotes one of the officials in Dhaka as saying. Two major general-level officers of Special Security Force (SSF) - agency which is entrusted with security of the prime minister - are also said to have met the same opposition leader in London.

The calls intercepted by Bangladeshi agencies have unearthed ISI’s plan of creating widespread disturbances along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border and in areas where Rohingya refugees are being kept.

“Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence agencies had earlier intercepted communications between ISI’s Brigadier Ashfaq and Hafiz Tohar, chief of the military wing of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group that is said to be carrying out attacks in the interests of the Rohingya refugees,” the CNN-News18 reported. “In these tapes, Ashfaq is heard asking Tohar to mount multiple attacks on Burmese security forces right after former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan had presented the Rakhine Commission report to Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar president Htin Kyaw on August 24,” the report added.