Insurgency / Assam

Calcutta, May 5: Calcutta police on Monday said that they would charge all four tea companies headquartered in Calcutta with business interests in Assam with indulging in “anti-national activities” for funding the Bodo militant outfit.

The police have also learnt that these companies had been funding the NDFB rebels not only for the last two years, as initial interrogation had revealed, but at least for the last seven to eight years.

Without naming the four tea companies, Calcutta detective department chief Soumen Mitra said, “We are collecting evidence against these tea firms and we shall...

KOLKATA, May 3 — Two ultras of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, arrested from a city hotel, were being interrogated by the police to ascertain if militant outfits were being funded by major tea companies in West Bengal, reports PTI.

City police detective department’s Deputy Commissioner Soumen Mitra said today that the militant organisation was suspected to be extorting money from tea companies, and the police interrogation was proceeding to ascertain facts.

“Our interrogation is proceeding in that direction, since we suspect their role as extortionists,” Mitra said, refusing to...

GUWAHATI, May 3 — Concerned State police officials at the ground level are yet to be given special instruction as a sequel to the agreements of Assam and Meghalaya governments to go for joint police operation against extremists active along the inter-State boundary. Police sources informed that although chief ministers of both the States recently announced the decision to go for joint anti-insurgency operations along the Assam-Meghalaya boundary areas, particularly in highly-infested boundary between Goalpara district in Assam and Garo Hills in Meghalaya, State police authority was yet to...

GUWAHATI, May 2 — The Army today released the 15 Dima Halam Daogah (DHD) militants it had picked up from Udarbund area in Cachar district on Tuesday last on charges of violating ‘ceasefire’ ground rules. The Army apprehended the militants along with weapons far away from their ceasefire designated camp at Ditokcherra in North Cachar Hills district on suspicion that the Dimasa ultras were out to attack Hmar community areas in Cachar district.

However, in the wake of arrest of its cadres by the Army, the DHD yesterday threatened to pull out of the ceasefire agreement with Government of India...

GUWAHATI, May 2 — The arrest of two NDFB leaders in Kolkata on Tuesday has exposed the feud running deep amongst the top leadership of the banned militant outfit. Police sources today said NDFB chairman Ranjan Daimary was directly behind the arrest of Sunil Brahma alias B Simang, the NDFB spokesperson, and it was Daimary who intimated Kolkata police about the presence of Brahma along with Indra Mohan Basumatary alias B Buthang, the other NDFB man arrested there.

The rift between Daimary and Brahma has been widening for the last several years and although it narrowed to some extent at the...

Guwahati, April 30: Hotly contesting claims by the army that a section of its activists had violated the ceasefire with the Centre and instigated the recent Dimasa-Hmar clashes, the Dima Halam Daoga (DHD) today demanded the release of the 15 rebels who were arrested yesterday in Cachar district.

A senior official told The Telegraph here that the DHD leadership took up the twin issues directly with the state government. He said the outfit clarified that its activists had not set up any camp other than the designated ones and that the 15 members arrested yesterday were actually in transit.

The...

GUWAHATI, April 28 — Close on the heels of ethnic riots between Dimasa and Hmar communities in the districts of North Cachar Hills and Cachar, threat of another ethnic strife over the issue of granting Scheduled Tribe (Hills) status to the Bodos living in the hill districts is looming large in Karbi Anglong.

According to the Clause 8 of the Memorandum of Settlement signed between the Central and State Governments and Bodo Liberation Tiger (BLT), the government would consider sympathetically the issue of granting ST(H) status to the Bodo Kacharis living in the Karbi Anglong and NC Hills...

Guwahati, April 27: The apex organisation of the Dimasa tribe today urged the Assam government to flush out Hmar militants from Cachar and North Cachar Hills, saying they were responsible for the spate of ethnic clashes in the twin districts.

The Jadikhe Naisho Hoshom (JNH) said militants of the Hmar People’s Convention (Democratic) had infiltrated the strife-torn districts from adjacent Manipur and Mizoram to instigate the Hmar community to fight with the Dimasas.

Waimijing, another Dimasa organisation, made a similar statement in a memorandum to chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

The JNH asked the...

SHILLONG, April 27 — The Hmar people have strongly warned the Dimasa people and Assam Government that they must not be held responsible for any future catastrophe if the terror tactics and the oppressive methods unleashed on them (Hmars) are not immediately stopped. In a faxed statement to North East Press Service here on Thursday, Lalthanmawia Pajamte, Joint Secretary of the apex body of the Hmars, “the Hmar Inpui”, said recent onslaughts against the Hmar people had forced them to a totally defensive position with no options of going offensive.

Ridiculing the peace proposal arranged by the...

GUWAHATI, April 27 — Militant outfit National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) has demanded an amount of Rs five lakh every year from the National Hydro Electric Power Corporation (NHPC). In a release here today, Capt B Habrang, Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion of the NDFB, said that the outfit released NHPC engineer Amitabh Jha from its captivity yesterday with the condition that the NHPC would pay a ‘donation’ of Rs five lakh every year. Jha was abducted on May 14 last year when he was on his way to Guwahati from Gaylegphu in Bhutan. The NDFB release said that the other conditions...