[Assam] Scribe, be prescriptive to Indian Governments and force Delhi to accept Assam’s Sovereignty restoration demand for negotiation rather than writing uselessly on meaningless peace talks and seeking submission to it by the ULFA on India's terms.

[Bartta Bistar]

 Did police goof-up cost Ram his life?
http://www.newkerala.com/july.php?action=fullnews&id=46239

By Syed Zarir Hussain, Guwahati, July 13: It was sheer callousness on the
part of the Assam police that led to the killing of kidnapped Food
Corporation of India (FCI) executive director Phul Chand Ram, caught in a
crossfire between security forces and militants of the outlawed United
Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).

Ram was killed in a gunfight early Thursday at village Borkapanitema, about
50 km west of Guwahati, while police tried to rescue him from the clutches
of ULFA who abducted him from here April 17.

There are contradictory claims made by the police top brass now to wriggle
out of the mess - some said they had prior information about Ram being held
hostage inside the village house, while others maintained they were not
aware.But locals said that before raiding the house the police knew very
well that Ram was inside.

The death of Ram has raised several questions. Why did the police go on an
offensive despite knowing the FCI official was inside? "If the police had
specific information about Ram being there inside the house, then I would
say the action was hasty and very badly planned," Hare Krishna Deka, former
Assam police chief, told IANS.

Two ULFA rebels were also killed in the encounter. The three bullet-riddled
bodies, including that of Ram, were found inside the house.

"Had it been a routine tip-off that some extremists were inside the house
and there was an encounter in which Ram was unknowingly killed, there is
nothing wrong in such an operation," Deka said.

"But it appears from reports that the raid was done in total haste and in an
utterly unplanned manner."

This is the second time the Assam police goofed up. On June 30, a mutilated
body was recovered and they believed it was Ram and immediately asked his
family to come and identify the body.

Ram's son Praveen arrived, mistakenly identified the body as that of his
father and even performed the last rites in Ghaziabad.

In a dramatic twist, the FCI official telephoned his family July 6 to say he
was alive and that the ULFA was seeking the release of two of their jailed
leaders to set him free.

The government failed to react and did not even bother to open any channel
of communication with the ULFA to seek Ram's release.

The tragic death of Ram has also exposed intelligence failure and claims by
the government that the ULFA have lost its support base in rural areas.

>From April 17 to July 12, the ULFA was shifting Ram from one place to
another in western Assam. Had there been no support base, the ULFA would
have failed to keep him hostage for so long.

The ease with which the ULFA managed to keep Ram in their custody has also
exposed the so-called "massive military crackdown" in the state.

"How is it possible for the ULFA to evade tight security for close to three
months and shift Ram from one place to another? It appears there is no
security at all ...the government has failed totally," said Apurba Kumar
Bhattacharyya, a senior leader of the opposition Asom Gana Parishad.

In the past, too, the Assam police have failed to rescue most of those
kidnapped - those who were abducted and later released by the ULFA
reportedly paid heavy ransoms.

The ULFA had killed Russian coal expert Sergei Gritchenko in July 1991 after
kidnapping him from Ledo where he was working for Coal India Ltd. In 1997,
noted social activist Sanjoy Ghosh was abducted from the world's largest
river island Majuli and later killed - his body has not been found yet.

The Congress-led government now has to do lot of soul-searching and also try
to evolve a different modus-operandi to deal with insurgency. The best
option is to seriously pursue the task of brokering peace through talks
rather than writing the ULFA off as a spent force.

The ULFA on their part should also avoid bargaining at the expense of
innocent lives and come for talks if at all they believe in a negotiated
settlement.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.assamnet.org/pipermail/assam-assamnet.org/attachments/20070713/b7f7dd55/attachment.htm>