Tea-estate manager, doctors held for rendering aid to senior ULFA

GUWAHATI, July 20: The manager of a tea-estate, belonging to a major group, alongwith two doctors, have been arrested by the police at Jorhat in Upper Assam on Wednesday for allegedly extending medical and financial aid to a senior ULFA leader earlier this month. The three include the manager and medical officer of Moabund, a prestigious plantation, belonging to the Williamson and Magor Group. The three had allegedly provided assistance to Ratul Datta, a senior leader of the ULFA's Upper Assam wing, who was suffering from Malaria and had subsequently died last week. According to G P Singh, the superintendent of police, Jorhat, the executive and the doctors had not only provided medical-aid to the deceased ULFA leader, but had even provided him with accommodation. The ULFA leader who is stated to have contracted the disease while in a camp inside Nagaland, had arrived in one of the tea-estates on July 11, where he was offered treatment, Singh said. The SP also said that the manager of the garden even personally escorted Ratul Datta to the Jorhat Christian Mission Hospital, two days later. On July 15, his body was handed over to the family by a group of boys, supposedly belonging to the ULFA, the SP added. The arrest of the three tea-plantation officials incidentally came within two weeks of Lt Gen DB Shekatkar, GOC of the Army's Four Corps (who is also operational chief of the counter-insurgency operations in Assam) telling The Indian Express that the ULFA had renewed its nexus with the tea industry. It was only in 1997 that Tata Tea, a major player in Assam's Rs 2500-crore tea industry, was found extending medical facilities to ULFA cultural wing chief Pranati Deka. This also led to the unearthing of information about a meeting Tata Tea officials had with ULFA armed wing chief Paresh Barua in Bangkok the same year.