India-Bangladesh ties "long-standing," Sheikh Hasina's extradition issue "hasn't strained" relationship: Ex-Bangladesh envoy

Dhaka [Bangladesh], January 8 (ANI): Former Deputy High Commissioner for Bangladesh to India, Mashfee Binte Shams said that although Sheikh Hasina's extradition from India is an important issue, it has not strained the ties between New Delhi and Dhaka as the relationship is "long-satnding" that has been evolving over the last 50 years.
Shams, while speaking with ANI, said that India and Bangladesh said that extradition is not the only issue between the two nations, and both countries are working for their "multi-faceted" and "multi-dimensional" relationship
"Sheikh Hasina's extradition right now is very important for the government of Bangladesh," she said.
"Bangladesh-India relations is a long-standing relationship. But this is not the only issue or the only factor that the two countries are working on. They are saying it's a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional relationship which has been evolving over the last 50 years and even before our liberation, there was a relationship. So it is a factor, it is an important issue right now, but I wouldn't say that it's the only issue between the two countries. And while it remains critically important for the government of Bangladesh right now, I don't think it has strained the relationship, as you would call it, between the two countries," she added.
Shams said that instead of focusing on short-term emergencies, one must focus on long-term relationship between the two countries.
"Sometimes we tend to react in very short-term, responding to very short-term emergencies. But we always need to remember the long-term relationship, the long-term goals, the shared objectives or past linkages or history," she said.
Talking about the Hasina's extradition, Shams said it is a "complicated affair" and there are multiple legal, judicial and bureaucratic processes involved, adding that several political issues and larger bilateral ties are also at stake.
"Extradition is an extremely complicated affair if you look at it this way that even when two countries have the best interest in their heart, it still takes sometimes years for the extradition process to be completed. There are legal issues involved, there are judicial processes involved, there are bureaucratic processes involved. So even when two countries are cooperative and they want to extradite somebody who is wanted in the other country, even then I have seen that it takes, sometimes it takes years for the whole process to be completed. So here where there are many larger political issues involved, there are many issues of bilateral, bigger bilateral issues at stake. Perhaps it will be a much more complicated process," Shams further said.
She added, "If you think of some of the people who have been extradited from Bangladesh to India, even those processes took considerable time to actually happen. Even after we signed the extradition treaty, it took quite a few years, both sides willing."
Earlier, on December 24, 2015, top leader of United Liberation Front of Asom, Anup Chetia was released from a jail in Assam after he obtained bail in four cases, The Daily Star reported.
Following his extradition on November 11, Chetia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in Delhi in connection with a murder in Golaghat, the Daily Star reported.
Chetia was handed over to India by Bangladesh where he was in jail since his arrest by the country's police in 1997 on charges of cross-border intrusion, carrying fake passports and illegally keeping foreign currencies, as per The Daily Star. (ANI)