Koirala and Bangaldesh Mukti Bahini Arms purchased from hijack money were sent to East Pakistan

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Prime Minister of Nepal, Girija Prasad Koirala, was involved in printing fake Indian currency to finance the armed struggle against the royal government of Nepal.

There is another aspect of that story which is on record but apparently not publicised so far. Most of the money that had fallen into the hands of the party activists when they had hijacked a small aircraft carrying cash in Indian currency from Biratnagar to Kathmandu (which had landed at Forbesganj in north Bihar) was utilised to buy arms in preparation for launching an attack on the royal forces from a distant hill district in eastern Nepal. The aircraft with all aboard except the two hijackers was allowed to proceed to Kathmandu without any harm.

That attack with disastrous result for the Nepali Congress leadership was launched in 1975.However, in 1971,a truckload of arms was sent to Bangladesh from Varanasi, where B.P. Koirala and his family was staying at that time, for helping the young Bangladeshi rebels take on the Pakistani army.

Two young leaders of the Nepali Congress party, Sushil Koirala who is now the acting president of the party and Chakra Banstola, a former Nepalese Ambassador to India along with a trainer Col. Rai had accompanied the truck .Another activist, Sushil Upadhyaya, had also accompanied the team.

This information as also what happened in 1975,had been told by Shri B.P.Koirala ( ?BP? henceforth) to Shri Bhola Chatterjee, a socialist from West Bengal, who was close to Koirala and the Nepali Congress, and is now part of the book entitled B. P. Koirala , Portrait of a Revolutionary. The book is based on a taped interview by Shri Chatterjee, the tapes having been deposited with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi.

Col. Rai had come back disappointed saying among other things that unless the young Bangladeshis had more sophisticated arms and strong explosives, they could not destroy a bridge which was used by the Pakistanis for their nocturnal raids on hapless Bangladeshis. He had also said unless the Government of India did something, all the freedom fighters of Bangladesh would be massacred.

?BP? had permitted Chatterjee to include in the latter'sprojected book on Jayapakash Narayan that the arms were supplied to the freedom fighters of Bangladesh at the request of the Sarvodaya leader himself. ?JP? as is well known, was very close to the Nepali Congress and its top leaders .

The incident of 1975 was tragic. BP had told Chatterjee that the Nepali Congress had planned to capture one district in Nepal, from where the campaign for liberating the rest of the country would be launched.

It was true that after this episode the Nepali Congress did not undertook any more attacks and it was shortly thereafter that ?BP? had spoken about a national reconciliation with King Birendra. But that is another story.

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