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ULFA kidnaps top FCI official : Demands Rs. 21 crore ransom

	April 23, 2007

Meanwhile, the ULFA on April 19 abducted Executive Director P.C. Ram of state-owned Food Corporation of India. According to reports, the outfit has demanded Rs 21 crore in ransom to release him.



Ram was kidnapped from Guwahati along with his driver Rabiram Basumatary on April 17, but the incident came to light only after he called his son and adopted daughter Junu Murmu, an Adivasi girl from Baksa district, to say he was being held hostage but was unharmed.



ULFA has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of Ram.



A senior police official said investigators had zeroed in on Baksa district, nearly 200 km from Guwahati, as the location where P.C. Ram, was taken from the state capital. He neither confirmed nor denied that the abductors contacted Ram’s family in Ghaziabad to specify the ransom.



However, Ram’s son Pravin told newspersons from Ghaziabad that he was unaware of the abductors demanding such a huge ransom for his father’s release. “Everything is being looked after by the FCI headquarters in New Delhi and the Assam government...I have nothing to say,” he said.



Senior Superintendent of Police (City) S.N. Singh said the phone numbers from which Ram made calls to Pravin in Ghaziabad once and twice to Junu in Guwahati had been traced. “They were made from two mobile numbers, one an Aircel connection and the other a BSNL service. We discovered that both numbers were used by ULFA earlier.”



The SSP said ULFA may have used someone known to Ram to lure him to somewhere on the outskirts of the city and abducted him there. He denied having any information about a ransom call to the abducted bureaucrat’s family or office.



A police team has found Ram’s official Ambassador car (AS-01 V/1353) abandoned near a State Bank of India branch in Rangia town of Kamrup district. “We have been raiding possible militant hideouts in the Barama region of Baksa district to rescue Ram,” Singh said.



Rajiv Kumar, the additional director-general of FCI’s vigilance wing, has arrived in Assam to co-ordinate the rescue efforts.





Bodo meet to broker peace



Leaders of the Bodo community who have also been agitating for decades for carving out Bodoland within Assam, held a meeting in Kokrajhar on April 20 in an attempt to broker peace between former Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) activists and the Natioal Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB).



Six Bodo organisations, led by the Bodo Sahitya Sabha, held talks with leaders of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) to broker peace between the two the BLT and NDFB. Former BLT members and the ceasefire-bound NDFB have been engaged in a slanging match after the former allegedly attacked an NDFB camp at Medhaghat in Baksa district on March 26, in which one rebel was killed.



While BTC chief Hagrama Mohilary alleged that the NDFB had a nexus with the state police and continued an extortion drive in Kokrajhar, the rebel outfit accused the BTC of raising a new militant organisation.



The six organisations - All Bodo Students’ Union (Absu), All Bodo Women Welfare Federation, Bodo Harimu Afat, Dularai Bodo Abadari Afat and All Bodo Employees Federation and the Bodo Sahitya Sabha, passed a five-point resolution to ensure peace in the Bodo belt.



After the three-hour meeting, which was attended by BTC chief Hagrama Mohilary and his deputy Kampha Borgoyari, who are also the chief adviser and adviser of ex-BLT Welfare Society, the participants decided to avoid any provocative statements.



They also decided to put pressure on the Centre to hold talks with NDFB. The members urged NDFB to submit the charter of demands as desired by the government and stick to the ground rules of the ceasefire. They also decided to urge the government to hold a high-level inquiry into the Medhaghat incident.



The six organisations had held a similar meeting with the NDFB on April 12 at Jwhwlao Jothumsali. NDFB secretary general Govindo Basumatary, alias B. Swmkwr and Sunil Basumatary, the outfit’s spokesman, attended the meeting.



The Bodo organisations are confident that with both the sides coming forward to maintain peace, the situation will soon return to normality.



“We have got a positive response from both the parties. They are ready to carry the peace initiative forward, which is a positive sign and indeed good news for the community and society as a whole,” said Bodo Sahitya Sabha president Brajendra Kumar Brahma.



The NDFB secretary general has also assured of cooperation in restoring peace. “We don’t want the fratricidal killings of 1998-2000 in the community to resurface. We want to carry the peace process forward with the slogan ‘let us forget and forgive’ for the development of the community,” he said.



The Bodo organisations have planned another joint meeting with the NDFB, the BTC and ex-BLT members, to be held in the first week of May, said Absu president Rwngwra Narzary.