A Sarchop in Tihar Jail
What was the Bhutanese Home Minister doing for so many days in Delhi? He left empty-handed and a dissident leader lives to fight another day.
In 1989, Teknath Rizal, a Bhutanese dissident who had taken shelter in Nepal, was kidnapped by the Panchayat-era authorities and handed over to Thimphu´s security officials who waited by a Druk Air jet at Kathmandu airport. Tek Nath Rizal has been in a Bhutanese jail since, declared a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International. An identical modus operandi almost played itself out in mid-April this year when a Druk Air plane was commandeered by Thimphu´s Home Minister, Dago Tshering, and waited on the tarmac at New Delhi´s Indira Gandhi International Airport. The minister´s mission, to spirit home a Bhutanese dissident, whom the Indian Government had detained following an extradition request made by Bhutan. But the ending turned out to be different this time.