ULFA to launch major offensive during polls

Guwahati, July 17: The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) has drawn up an exhaustive plan for launching major offensives, including bomb blasts, during the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in Assam even as it conspires to sabotage troop movement from here to Kargil. Official sources said here on Saturday quoted the ULFA western unit women's wing leader Minati Sutradhar alias Nizara Medhi as stating that the militants were undergoing intensive training on detonation of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and were instructed to remain prepared for any situation during the hustings. Minati made the confessions during interrogation by the Border Security Force (BSF). She was recently apprehended along with two others in Bongaigaon district when they had slipped into the state to take back the outfit's women activists who left their camp in bordering Bhutan following pressure from that country's government. The sources also said that the ULFA women's wing leader informed that the outfit was facing an acute financial crunch as its extortion sources had dried up and due to restriction on cadres' movement by the leadership. The ultras were now forced to shift many of their camps to Arunachal Pradesh due to the Bhutan government's action, sources said.