More manpower for Paresh group

PULLOCK DUTTA

Paresh Barua
Jorhat, Sept. 16 : The Paresh Barua group of Ulfa has become stronger by 105 cadres at a time when the faction was being seen as one of no consequence since the split in the outfit and resultant depletion in manpower.
The new recruits drawn from various parts of the state, but mainly from Tinsukia, are already in Myanmar undergoing training since July.
Goluk Moran, an Ulfa cadre who joined the pro-talks group of the outfit on September 3, disclosed this. He is now at the designated camp of the pro-talks group in Tinsukia district.
Goluk, who hails from Thekari area under Pengari police station in Tinsukia, had come from Myanmar along with 15 others in end-July to carry out extortion drives in Upper Assam.
The other cadres who accompanied him from Myanmar are still camping in neighbouring Nagaland.
“Goluk had come home from a hideout somewhere along the Assam-Nagaland border and decided to join our group,” Prabal Neog, a leader of the pro-talks group, told The Telegraph today.
Confirming the news, a senior police official in Upper Assam said most of these cadres whom Goluk has mentioned are from Tinsukia district and had left for Myanmar in the early part of July. “Last heard, they were on their way to the Taga area in Myanmar where Ulfa has a camp,” the official said.
He said Goluk, who also came from the Taga area, had disclosed that 40 National Democratic Front of Boroland cadres were undergoing training at the same camp along with Ulfa.
Recently, Assam police had apprehended a group of NDFB cadres who had come from Myanmar, from the Naginimora area along the Assam-Nagaland border in Sivasagar district.
“Goluk joined Ulfa only a year ago and had gone to Taga along with another group which had gone to Myanmar early this year. He has no idea about the presence of any other rebel camps in that country, apart from the one in which he was undergoing training,” the official said.
Sources in the home department said Ulfa has four camps in Myanmar with a mobile headquarters in the Sagaing division which is shared by at least 10 militant groups of the Northeast, including the Khaplang faction of the NSCN, People’s Liberation Army, Prepak and UNLF.
Sources, however, said there was no confirmation about the recent reports about the attacks on Ulfa camps by Myanmar army.
Neog, on the other hand, said it was with the help of the Khaplang faction of the NSCN, the Ulfa cadres travel to Myanmar and back through Nagaland. “The NSCN-K militants provide shelter and act as guides to trek through leech-infested jungles to Myanmar,” he said.