Another low for ULFA

After employing schoolboys to plant bombs around Doomdooma town in Tinsukia district in the run up to I-Day this year, the ULFA(I) has sunk to another low. It has now taken a leaf out of the Islamic State’s book to release a video showing a captive youth guarded by its masked guerrillas. Abducted near the Assam-Aruchal border, the youth is heard appealing in the video to his parents, the chief minister and MLA Bolin Chetia to get him released. However, the ransom demanded by ULFA(I) was Rs 1 crore, which it later purportedly scaled down to Rs 80 lakh. The youth’s father, the Tinsukia zilla parishad vice-president, has said he simply does not have such kind of money. However, the ULFA(I) has told the youth’s family to get the ransom money from MLA Bolin Chetia, with whom his father is known to be close. The outfit has also claimed that the youth was spying on its activities in the Changlang jungles at the behest of MLAs Chetia and Bhaskar Sarma and some former ULFA militants. But the hardline ULFA faction is known to mete out summary justice to spies and informers, so its argument here rings hollow. If it is now stooping to kidppings for ransom to stay afloat, having begun hitting soft targets with child bombers, it has indeed wandered far away from its once ‘revolutiory’ ideals.