Links with ULFA

This newspaper, in its Sunday edition, has carried a front-page news item which says that police have arrested a person in the heart of Guwahati for allegedly collecting names and addresses of contractors and passing them off to the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) for the past several years. According to police, this man called Tutu Bora, who hails from Majuli, was earlier arrested in 2010 for his alleged links with the ULFA in the Jorhat district. What is even more interesting is that after his release from jail, the man went off to Pune and worked in a private security agency for a few years before returning home and joining another private security agency in Guwahati. This piece of news has some serious implications which might even lead to long-term problems, especially for the youths from rural Assam who go out in search of employment and livelihood outside the region. If not managed properly by the police, this single incident of arrest might prompt employers outside the region to shut the door for the job-seekers from Assam. While it is a fact that the ULFA, and for that matter, most of such so-called rebel groups have lost steam after the people of Assam developed hatred against them, especially after the Dhemaji explosion of 2004 in which the ULFA had killed 13 innocent children. It was from the very beginning that the ULFA remained a directionless gang misguided by a handful of self-styled intellectuals, which had indulged in senseless killings, abductions and extortion, all in the name of Assam and the Assamese people. The militant group, headed by a handful of college drop-outs, never had any basic understanding of the basic issues plaguing Assam and the ethnic communities of the state. This became most evident when the top ULFA leaders took shelter in Bangladesh, and thus never ever had the courage to utter even one word against large-scale infiltration of people from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. Last week's arrest meanwhile has confirmed that the ULFA - or its remnant - is still collecting money by illegal means. What the police should do is to identify all those contractors who have been paying money to the ULFA and take stringent action against them.