Interpol alert against killers of Dalai Lama’s aide

The Interpol has issued a red corner notice against two Chinese nationals for their alleged involvement in the killing of a close aide...

The Interpol has issued a red corner notice against two Chinese nationals for their alleged involvement in the killing of a close aide of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and two of his students in 1997 in a suspected fallout of sectarian dispute.

The red corner notice was issued against Lobsang Chodak and Tenzin Chozin for allegedly killing Lobsang Gyatso, Principal of Dharamshala-based Tibetan Dialectics Institute, and his two students in 1997, an incident that prompted security agencies to tighten the security around the Dalai Lama and monitor the monk traffic from Nepal and other areas.

The dead were the members of the inner circle of the Dalai Lama and brutally slain on the night of February 4,

1997 in a bedroom a few hundred yards from the Dalai Lama’s exile residence in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.

The body of 70-year-old Gyatso was found the next morning and the two young monks—Nagawang Lodoe and the

Dalai Lama’s Chinese-language interpreter, Lobsang Nagwang—died within hours of the attack.

According to the Interpol red corner notice, the two alleged assailants, who are students of ‘Dorje Shugden Devotees Charitable and Religious Society’, arrived in Dharamshala on January 31 and stayed in a hotel. The Dorje Shugden cult, also known Gyalchen Shugden, indulges in the worship of a spirit called Dolgyal, a practice that has not been accepted by the Dalai Lama who has stated that the “inclination of this (Dolgyal) spirit is to harm, rather than benefit, the cause of Tibet”.

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This cult has offices in, among other places, Italy and Britain where it operates under the banner of the Shugden Supporters Community. Its Indian headquarters is in Delhi’s Majnu-ka-Tilla area from where it coordinates the activities of its fundamentalist followers.

The CBI, armed with a non-bailable warrant against the two, had been pursuing with the Interpol for issuance of a red corner notice against the two since 2005. The Interpol finally issued the warrant a fortnight ago, an information which was conveyed to the CBI last week. The two, identified by the taxi driver who brought them from Delhi to Dharamshala, were booked on charges of criminal conspiracy and murder.

This murder had put top Intelligence Bureau officers and senior officials of External Affairs Ministry on high alert who came to this sanctuary in the foothills of the Himalayas to review security arrangements for the Dalai Lama.