New Delhi, April 12: Ulfa chief Paresh Barua has fled Bangladesh, Dhaka has told Delhi in its first official admission about the Assam militant outfit’s operations there. Indian agencies said Barua could be in Thailand.

“Paresh Barua is no longer in Bangladesh, but we are working and will definitely take action,” the Bangladesh Rifles director-general, Major General Shakil Ahmed, told reporters today at the end of talks with his BSF counterpart, Major General A.K. Mitra.

Ahmed’s admission came in answer to India’s demand that insurgent leaders like Barua, who have Interpol red-corner notices in their names, be handed over.

Intelligence sources here said Barua was understood to have escaped to Bangkok on a Bangladeshi passport. They said Barua had tried to flee to Pakistan after the BSF-BDR meeting last year but was prevented from doing so.

The Thai capital is a hiding place for several militant leaders from the Northeast. Top leaders of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), Ulfa and the Jewel Gorlosa faction of the Dima Halam Daogah live there — at times shuttling between Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand — while co-ordinating operations back home.

Ahmed also said Ulfa leader Anup Chetia was not being extradited because of legal hurdles. India’s request for Chetia’s deportation has been pending with Bangladesh since 2005, when he completed a seven-year jail term.

Earlier, human rights groups in Bangladesh had pressured Dhaka to extend his term and give him asylum.

There was a change in Dhaka’s tone on Indian insurgents during the BSF-BDR meeting. Ahmed said insurgency in India’s northeast was a threat to Bangladesh.

“When there is smuggling of arms and criminal activities in the Northeast, some of it will spill over to Bangladesh. An insecure northeastern India is not good for us and Bangladesh will not condone such activities.”

Mitra said the number of camps set up by Northeast militants in Bangladesh — a list of which had been provided to Dhaka last year — had come down from 141 to 117.