NEW DELHI, India, June 27, Reuter: Gurkha militants fighting for autonomy attackeda police patrol with homemade rifles and bombs today as 28 Gurkhas were arrested during continued violence in northeastern India.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) said the patrolmen returned fire when a mob of militant attacked them, but no one was injured in the eighth day of a campaign of terror called by the Gurkhas National Liberation Front (GNLF).
Front leader Subash Ghising launched the campaign for autonomy for some 900,000 Nepal speaking Gurkhas who make up 90 per cent of the population in the hills around Darjeeling in West Bengal state.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government yesterday offered to talk with the Front but told them to call off the campaign, which has claimed two lives this week. Officials said Ghising would be invited for talks in New Delhi in three weeks’ time.
In today’s incidents, Gurkha militants attacked a hydroelectric power plant and made off with a large stock of explosives, PTI said. They also burned down two government buildings and ransacked a child development center. Two of the 28 arrested were prominent Front leaders and police were still conducting raids on activists’ hideouts and house to house searches, PTI said.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 3, 1987
