ULFA denies attack on Paresh Barua in Dhaka

GUWAHATI, March 6: The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) on Tuesday denied that its chief Paresh Baruah was attacked by gunmen in Dhaka on Thursday. Reports to that effect were the 'Indian government's propaganda', it said. In a statement, exclusively e-mailed to TheNewspaperToday, ULFA foreign secretary Sasha Choudhury, said: "These reports are all rubbish. He (Paresh Baruah) is fine with his comrades-in-arms at the general headquarters." Choudhury added: "India is only trying to locate him with these very propaganda traps. They want his voice over telephone to pin point his location." Media reports said Paresh Baruah survived an assassination bid on Thursday in downtown Dhaka's Gulshan area when six gunmen fired at him as he stepped out of a restaurant. The reports added that one of Baruah's close associates, Hussain Rumi, was killed while his driver Akram Quadir was wounded. In December last year, the paramilitary Assam Rifles had issued a statement in Agartala saying that Paresh Baruah was injured while his deputy Raju Baruah was killed in an attack in the Dighinala area in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts. That attack was said to have taken place on December 15. Paresh Baruah had, however, called up journalists via satellite telephone and denied any attack on him. He had also said Raju Baruah was fine. Highly-placed Assam government officials insist that a shootout did take place around the time in December last year in Bangladesh's CHT involving the ULFA and other armed men. Assam director-general of police (operations) G.M. Srivastav, told TheNewspaperToday that Rana Baruah, one of Paresh Baruah's closest aides and the ULFA's stores in-charge in Bangladesh, was killed in that shootout. That ULFA deputy commander-in-chief Raju Baruah is alive and kicking has been proved with Indian intelligence agencies receiving reports that the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singhye Wangchuk, met him last month during the latter's visit to the southern districts of the kingdom. King Wangchuk, according to these reports, told the ULFA leader that they should make arrangements for their cadres to vacate their camps and withdraw from the kingdom. Bhutanese authorities could not be immediately reached for comment on the reported meeting between the King and the ULFA leader.