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North East : Special force to fight rebels

	August 20, 2007

The Assam Government has decided to raise a special police battalion “for jungle warfare” to take on insurgents operating from dense forests and to augment police infrastructure in Karbi Anglong district by dividing it into two police districts.



Announcing this in Guwahati on Friday, August 17, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who also holds the Home portfolio, said the battalion would be made up of fresh recruits. He said the battalion would be given special training in jungle warfare to provide it with a much-needed edge in counter-insurgency opera¬tions. According to sources, the battalion could be trained in the army’s jungle warfare training school at Vairangte in Mizor¬am.



Gogoi said the police strength in Karbi Anglong, which recently witnessed the massacre of over a dozen Hindi-speaking people in the state, would be doubled since it would now be split into two police districts. The government has sanctioned the creation of six more police stations and 13 more outposts to man the district.



At present, the district, one of the biggest in the country, has only six police stations and 11 outposts to man an area as large as 10,434 square km.



Gogoi said the district provided militants easy access to Meghalaya and Nagaland, through which they could enter Myanmar and Bangladesh respectively.



The Chief Minister said the Centre had suggested creation of three police districts, but the state government has decided to settle for two as of now. The Union Home Ministry has also directed the state government to expedite the process of raising two more India Reserve Battalions, as sanctioned by the Centre.

The state government had been delaying the process due to a financial crunch. “The Centre will finance the battalions for five years. Yet, the finance department is not very keen to raise the two battalions,” a senior police official said.



Condemning the killing of “defenceless poor people” in Karbi Anglong as barbaric and cowardly, Gogoi said Ulfa had, of late, started attacking soft targets as its capability to strike at security forces had diminished.





BSF rejects Bangla stand on rebel base



The Indian Border Security Force as well as intelligence agencies in south Assam have refuted claims by the border para¬military force of Bangladesh that militant outfits have no bases in Sylhet.



At a meeting, the BSF dismissed claims by the Bangladesh Rifles that Sylhet division of the neighbouring country does not have any sanctuary, base or training centre of anti-India mili¬tant outfits.



The commander of the BDR’s Sylhet division, Col. Abul Hos¬sain, asserted that not a single such haven existed in Sylhet division of Bangladesh.



Senior officials of the BSF and an intelligence agency in Cachar district, at a fraternal meeting between the BDR and BSF at Suterkandi checkpost in Karimganj district on Tuesday, strong¬ly refuted the assertion. The meeting was reported to be held in a cordial atmosphere.



They revealed that as many as 25 training camps were still in existence in the area, with the full knowledge of the authori¬ties in Bangladesh.



Sources said Ulfa, the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) and the National Liberation Front of Tripura (Biswamohan) have been quietly operating such camps in the adjoining country.



Sources said Ulfa alone still has six such training camps tucked away at Rajghat and Ramnagar Tetultala in Moulvi Bazar district, Nushirapunji and Islampur in Sylhet district and Jaga¬dishpur and Saidpur in Habiganj district. All of these camps are under the Sylhet administrative division.



At the closed door meeting between the BSF and BDR at Su¬terkandi village on the Indo-Bangladesh border on Tuesday, Col Hossain, however, said the Bangladesh government might consider India’s proposals to relocate the mobile telephony towers from the border areas of the adjacent country. Signals from these mobile towers can be received on the Indian side of the border in Karimganj district, creating problems for mobile telephony serv¬ice providers in India.



He also pointed out that Dhaka was also considering plans by the Indian government to raise barbed wire fencing along the international border of these two countries within 150 yards from thezero point of the border.



Col Hossain said at present, construction of such fencing within this distance, aiming at deterring smuggling and illegal cross-border movement of people of both countries, was barred by a protocol stipulated by the UN. He pointed out that such an imbroglio could be sorted out at the diplomatic level by both countries.



From the Indian side, the sector commander of the BSF, M.P. Singh, deputy inspector-general of police (south Assam) Y.V. Goutam and Karimganj district deputy commissioner Anurag Goel were present at the border meeting.





Ulfa duo held in Punjab



Two suspected Ulfa militants were arrested in Jalandhar on August 13 in a joint operation by Western Command military intel¬ligence and Punjab police.



Jalandhar senior superintendent of police Arpit Shukla said

Hemanta Roy and Jagdish Das were rounded up following intel¬ligence reports about their “suspicious” activities. “We seized five driving licences, two PAN cards, a camera, defence maps and some sensitive documents from them,” Shukla said.



Roy, who hails from Shingrapara village in Assam’s Baksa district, is a member of Ulfa’s 709 battalion and a relative of Hira Sarania, the “commander” of the unit. “Das was his asso¬ciate,” Shukla said.



Das has been living in Jalandhar for the past four months. He was picked up from Domariapull, but no arms or ammunition were found on him. Roy joined Das three months ago and was working as a waiter in the hotel from where he was arrested.



“This is perhaps the first time that we have had specific information on Ulfa militants in Punjab. The cell could have been tasked with procuring guns from across the border or via Jammu and Kashmir or could have had nefarious designs to destabilise the region with the help of Pakistan’s ISI,” an army officer said.



The police have registered a case under Sections 124 A (sedition) and 120 B (conspiracy) of the IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of the Officials Secrets Act.