An Indian security delegation was to arrive in Dhaka on Monday after India’s cricket tour of Bangladesh was put on hold over an Islamic threat to kill the cricketers, officials said.
”A security team will arrive in Dhaka today [Monday],” said Neeta Bhushan, first secretary of the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.
”They will assess the security situation … at the moment the tour is on hold pending a decision based on their recommendations. They will take their time so it may be a few days before a decision is made,” she said.
The threat was made in a hand-written fax purportedly sent to the High Commission in Dhaka by a little-known radical Islamic group calling itself Harkat-ul-Zihad.
Bangladeshi authorities suspect the locally based Harkat-ul-Zihad was behind an assassination bid on leading secular poet Shamsur Rahman in Dhaka in 1998.
The message said if the sportsmen visit Bangladesh, they will be killed in revenge for riots in the western Indian state of Gujarat in early 2002 that left at least 2 000 people dead — most of them Muslims.
”In revenge for the killing of 2 000 Muslims in Gujarat, we are going to kill Indian cricketers if they visit Bangladesh,” High Commission officials quoted the letter as saying.
The riots in Gujarat erupted after a suspected Muslim mob set alight a train, burning to death 59 Hindu activists and other passengers.
The Bangladeshi government has promised strict security measures to protect the team, who were scheduled to play two Tests and three one-dayers.
The first Test was set to start in Dhaka on December 9 and the second match the eastern port city of Chittagong from December 16.
The first one-dayer in Chittagong on December 23 was to be followed by back-to-back day-night matches in Dhaka on December 26 and 27. — Sapa-AFP