Interpol has arrested in India a Bangladeshi fugitive convicted of murdering eight people in Chittagong in 2000.

An activist of Islami Chhatra Shibir, Sazzad Hossain, 33, was convicted of shooting dead the eight. Of the victims, seven were members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), an associate body of the ruling Awami League.

The Interpol branch of India's Central Bureau of Investigation detained him at Amritsar airport in Punjab on Thursday when he was about to flee to Dubai with fake travel

documents, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

Sazzad is now in police custody in New Delhi.

India has informed Bangladesh of his arrest and sought details of the eight-murder case. If the Bangladesh government makes a formal request, India will definitely hand over the arrestee to them, a highly-placed source told The Daily Star yesterday.

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“The incumbent government in Bangladesh has cooperated with us so much in the security area, and there is no reason why we would not hand over the detainee."

Talking to newsmen in New Delhi yesterday, visiting Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury hinted that Bangladesh would formally request India to hand over Sazzad.

Our Chittagong correspondent adds: A Chittagong court on March 27, 2008 had sentenced Sazzad to death by hanging.

A resident of Bayezid area in the port city, Sazzad was carrying a forged passport bearing the name Md Abdullah as the son of one Hajji Sukkur from Barisal.

An official at the police headquarters in Dhaka said the authorities had already completed all the legal formalities to have the killer extradited from India.

The ministries of home and foreign affairs will soon send to India the papers required for his extradition, he added.

The Chittagong Metropolitan Police earlier on February 16 sent a letter to Interpol, the world's largest international police organisation, seeking his arrest.

Apart from the murder case, Sazzad is an accused in ten other criminal cases in Chittagong city.

Police arrested him on October 3, 2001, but he secured bail in 2004 and fled to Dubai.