From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: The proscribed United Liberation Front of Assam (anti-talks faction) on Thursday threatened the owner of a private satellite news channel based here and asked him to leave the state after closing down his business or else face the dire consequences.
In a statement e-mailed to the media here on Thursday afternoon, the ULFA alleged that the TV channel owned by industrialist Santosh Jaiswal and his family had tried to defame the outfit by misusing the electronic media by virtue of being its proprietor.
The outfit stated in one of the programmes, the TV channel recently branded ULFA as a mafia group smiliar to the one run by notorious gangster Daud Ibrahim.
The outfit alleged that Jaiswal had tried to use ULFA to further his business purpose and after failing on that account tried to defame ULFA using the journalists working in his news channel.
The ULFA stated that though it had utmost respect to the media, it would never allow anyone to misuse the media to further one’s vested business interests in Assam and accused Jaiswal of targeting indigenous businessmen using his news channel to serve his business interests in the state. It called upon the media persons working in the TV channel not to work for personal interests of its proprietor and instead work with dignity and objectivity to serve the greater interests of the people of Assam.
The outfit further alleged that Jaiswal showed audacity uindentify eminent journalists working for his channel as his financial adviserThere was, howefer, no recation forthcoming from the TV channel or its owner to the ULFA threat. However, sources informed that the owner of the channel who is an industrialist, did not respond to extortion demand served by the ULFA.