GUWAHATI: Sangbijit alias Sirsing Ingty, the leader of the anti-talks faction of National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) has now emerged as the most trouble-making militant leader in Assam which was passing through a phase of comparative peace recently with 16 militant groups engaged in different stages of peace process with the government.
The Sangbijit faction of the NDFB or the NDFB(S) is bent upon keeping Assam on boil in order to puncture the atmosphere of peace. Sangbijit alias Sirsing Ingty split the NDFB led by Ranjan Daimary in the year 2012 once the latter showed interest to hold dialogue with Government of India.
Though he is leading a Bodo tribe militant group, Sangbijit is not a Bodo but a member of Karbi tribe. According to security sources, Sangbijit has now taken shelter in Myanmar and is controlling operations of the outfit from there.
The faction has set up base in Myanmar with the help of anti-talks faction of the ULFA. The outfit has been on a spree of abduction and extortions in Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Council (BTC) areas of Assam and in areas close to Assam-Arunachal Pradesh and Assam-Bhutan border.
It lures vulnerable unemployed Bodo youth including young women to its ranks. Many Bodo youths were trapped by the outfit after they were promised a job with good salaries.
The fresh recruits are sent for training in Myanmar camps of the outfit through Nagaland.
Assam police had managed to foil several attempts by the outfit to sent new recruits to Myanmar in the past. In one such occasion Assam Police nabbed four youths including three girls, who were on their way to Myanmar to join the outfit, from the interstate bus terminus (ISBT) in Guwahati.
“The four youngsters were promised a good monthly ‘salary’ for joining the organisation. They don’t know much about the outfit and were lured by the promise of good money. By the time they realized what NDFB is all about, they would have already fallen in the trap,” said a senior police official.
The arrested persons were identified as Uttam Borgayari (23), Minu Basumatary (27), Anima Brahma (19) and Bharati Basumatary (19). All of them hail from Chirang district of the BTC.
Later Anima and Minu, on their way to a lower court, told media persons that they were unaware that they were joining NDFB or any other militant group.
In the later part of last year, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi had instructed Assam police to work out a specific strategy to deal with the threat posed by Sangbijit faction of the NDFB. An IGP rank official of the state police was posted in the BTC areas to maintain a sustained operation against the insurgent group.
There has been mass protests in the BTC areas against the marauding NDFB faction as the common people in the area don’t want fresh trouble after all the major Bodo militant groups had joined the peace process.
Deprived of the mass support in the BTC areas, the NDFB(S) has now started targeting innocent non-Bodo people including Hindi-speaking ones to create division and social trouble in the BTC areas to serve its narrow interests.
The newly-appointed Director General of Assam Police Khagen Sarma said that when a militant group came forward for talks, the anti-talks elements in that group tended to break away and tried to create trouble by targeting innocent and vulnerable targets and that was what was happening with the NDFB (S) which had broken away from the NDFB led by Ranjan Daimary after the latter opted for dialogue with the government. “But Sangbijit will also have to come forward for talks one day,” the DGP said.