Guwahati, Dec 16 (IANS): The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday arrested a key operative of the banned terrorist outfit, ULFA (I), for planting explosives in Guwahati during this year’s Independence Day celebrations, officials said.
The arrested person has been identified as Jahnu Baruah alias Arnab Axom.
A statement read: "NIA teams with the active support of Assam Police carried out searches at the house of Jahnu Baruah @ Arnab Axom in Dibrugarh in an intelligence-based operation carried out in the early hours of this morning. Several incriminating materials, including digital devices, were seized during a search of his house and are currently under examination. He was summoned to the local police establishment for further examination."
“The accused, during preliminary investigation, confessed to his involvement in planting four of the 11 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that were recovered by the state police during the I-Day celebrations,” it added.
The IEDs had been planted as part of the military protest and I-Day boycott call by ULFA-I Commander-in-Chief Paresh Baruah.
According to officials, Jahnu Baruah, who planted the four IEDs at Pan Bazar, Dispur, Gandhi Mandap and Satgaon areas in Guwahati city, had been under surveillance and monitoring for the past several weeks.
He was one of the several suspects identified by NIA, on the basis of technical and human intelligence, as being involved in collection and transportation of the IEDs that were planted to trigger large-scale explosions in Assam on the occasion of I-Day, causing loss to property and life and inciting terror in the state.
NIA had taken over the investigation of the case from the state police in September.
To recall, several places in Assam faced a series of bomb threats on August 15 following the claim by the banned militant outfit United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) that they had planted detonated bombs in 25 locations across the state.
The places include Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Nagaon and a few places in Guwahati as well. It was learned that ULFA-I placed bombs in at least eight spots in Guwahati city.
The outlawed group in a statement said that due to some technical errors, 'the bombs did not explode'.
According to a statement by ULFA-I, they intended to protest violently by detonating the explosives during Independence Day festivities.
But between 6 a.m. and 12 noon, "technical errors" prevented the bombs from detonating as intended.
A list of the targeted areas and pictures of certain bomb sites, including one close to the state secretariat in Dispur in Guwahati, were also published by ULFA-I.