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ULFA renegades make peace overtures to militants

In what appears to be an attempt at rapprochement, at least a dozen former United Liberation Front of Asom militants visited ULFA leader Raju Baruah's family on Monday.

Led by Lohit Deuri, a former staff officer in ULFA's Bhutan camps, the team went to Baruah's home in lower Assam's Nalbari district to console his family over the death of his nephew and brother-in-law. Angry family members had accused the surrendered ULFA militants -- or SULFA members -- of having killed the duo.

Deuri and his team denied the charge and said they respected their former colleagues. Baruah is an important leader of ULFA's armed wing. He was recently reported to have been killed in an attack on an ULFA convoy in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. But ULFA denied the charge.

Deuri surrendered last August with over 200 associates. Three of these men, including Abinash Bordoloi, were killed in an ULFA ambush on January 3. Their killing was followed by the murder of Baruah's relatives. A brother-in-law of Subhas Sarma, another ULFA hitman, was abducted from Guwahati and killed. This led to a public outcry on the streets of Guwahati and Nalbari.

The needle of suspicion points towards SULFA activists working in tandem with a section of police officers. The public outrage has brought the state government under pressure to disarm SULFA members and halt the killings.

On Monday, Flood Control Minister Promode Gogoi stunned the administration by demanding a probe into the killings. Gogoi, a veteran Communist, is the CPI's lone representative in the four-party ruling alliance led by the Asom Gana Parishad.

"The public allegation that a section of the SULFA is being used by certain police officers should be taken seriously by the government," he told a press conference. "A high-level investigation is a must and if any police officer is found to be involved, he must be punished," the minister added.

Meanwhile, following instructions from Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, the police have begun to disarm all those in possession of illegal weapons. Guwahati Superintendent of Police G P Singh told newsmen on Monday that two AK-56 rifles and 22 rounds of ammunition were found in a dustbin in the city. "Police pressure must have forced SULFA activists to dump these weapons," he said.

In another development, Additional Director General of Police (operations) G M Srivastava said the killing of ULFA hitman Sarma's brother-in-law was the handiwork of a six-member ULFA group which arrived from Bhutan recently. "The killing was a result of a feud between those who wanted to surrender and those who did not," the ADGP claimed.

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