New Delhi, October 25
Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, has tough task when he visits Dhaka tomorrow: to prevent Bangladesh joining Pakistan and China in attempting intelligence encirclement of India.

Well-placed sources in the South Block told “The Tribune” today that Mr Mishra would also be handing over to Ms Zia Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s invitation to pay an official visit to India at the earliest.

Sources said Mr Mishra would also convey a special message to Ms Zia that Prime Minister Vajpayee wanted her to make India the destination of her first foreign visit. Mr Mishra would be doing his best to convince Begum Zia to check anti-India activities in that country.

The Prime Minister has decided to send Mr Mishra to Dhaka to impress upon Begum Zia the government of India’s concerns on the growing anti-India climate in Bangladesh and increasing activities of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) on Bangladesh’s soil. Pakistan during the past decades has packed its embassy in Dhaka with ISI officials for launching subversive activities in north-east India.

Mr Mishra, who would meet Begum Zia and other senior Bangladesh government functionaries, would convey them that India always wanted to have friendly and cordial relations with that country especially in the wake of India’s role in the birth of Bangladesh.

Another major issue on the priority list of Mr Mishra would be the spate of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh which has prompted migration of hundreds of Bangladeshi Hindus to India from Tripura and West Bengal borders. Besides, there have been reports of growing number of attacks on Bangladeshi Hindus’ properties and rapes of Hindu women there. In wake of this, Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh recently met the Minister of State for Religious Affairs in Dhaka.

The anti-India climate in Bangladesh got a fillip just a couple of days back when the Zia government seized 10,000 copies of the “Desh” magazine’s special puja issue published by the Anand Bazar group of publications of Kolkata.

Dhaka took this action because of a short story, entitled “eto rakta keno” (Why so much blood), published in the magazine.

The story, written by noted Bengali novelist Somesh Mazumdar, deals with a factually correct incident of kidnapping of a Bengali girl from Tripura by Bangladesh north-east militants.