GUWAHATI: Though on the run since the launch of “Operation Rhino on September 14, the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) appears to have recovered from the initial shock of the Army crackdown.
This has become evident from the fact that it has started striking back, and even organizing rallies through other organizations. At least one senior police officer and two Congressmen have been slain by the militants during the last two weeks.
Of the Congressmen killed by the militants one was shot dead at Sibsagar in upper Assam, the other near Nalbari in lower Assam. The motive behind the killings are said to be that the ULFA suspected them to be informers of the Army and the police.
Even during the previous offensive, named Operation Bajrang, the ULFA had retaliated to Army action. A number of persons, mostly Congress. Workers were “sentenced to death” by the
militants, which included Assam Pradesh Congress (1) committee general secretary Manabendra Sharma. The latter was shot at point blank range at a crowded locality in the heart of Guwahati. The recent killing of Nitya Dutia, deputy superintendent (DSP) of Assam Police, has sent shock waves through the state bureaucracy and police, and all the remaining officers who were not provided with personal security earlier have been done so during the last few days, Dutta was shot dead by militants at a restaurant here on Sunday evening
How the militants managed to gun down a police officer in a city where security and patrol have been one of the tightest: for the past few months is still a mystery. Dutta, however, was unarmed and without a bodyguard. A senior police officer said Dutta must have been selected as a soft target by the ULFA simply to make its presence and activeness felt.
The Kamrup district police superintendent, Ashim Roy, on the other hand refused to term Duttas, killing as a preplanned one, I was a senseless murder without any definite motivation or reason, he said.
The Army has over the weeks shattered the ULFA ranks, and (Operation Rhino has rendered the militants weaker, government reports said. More than 1000, suspected ULFA activists have been arrested, and interrogation of some of the hardcore ones have revealed lot about the organization, Top leaders of the ULFA have reportedly fled from the state, leaving he situation other district commanders, the govt says.
Nothing, however, has been heard of the six persons who were. Taken host age by them militants way back in July. A senior ULFA leader who preferred anonymity reportedly told a local weekly here last week that the hostages were safe and that the militants had no intention to take their lives.
How the ULFA cadres in charge of the hostages are managing 10 keep away from security
forces a question for which nobody as an answer. Repeated appeals from the govt to the people not to provide shelter to the militants have also not produced much result, and the Army has of late started striking at specific locations in an attempt to surprise the militants along with hostages in totally unassuming and unthinkable premises.
The police and Army are understood to have prepared a list of residences of several “respect able” citizens of Guwahati which could tum out to be places of refuge or shelter for ULFA lead In a raid in one such residence in the city recently several personal belongings of ULFA.
Publicity secretary, Siddhartha Phukan were recovered, thus convincing. The security forces and intelligence of their nation that such targets would not prove fruitless. Sources in the police said militants were seven shelter by the common man under duress and not out of sympathy.
Reports are also available saying the Army just missed some of the hostages on several occasions as militants fled the spots in most of the cases barely one or two hours before the jawans reached the spot.
Tuesdays encounter and the subsequent death of two hardcore militants in Lakhimpur district in upper Assam on the other hand has been seen as a big blow to the ULFA.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 8, 1991
