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West Bengal seeks more forces

Rupam Banerjee in Calcutta

The Left Front government in West Bengal has asked for the deployment of more paramilitary forces in North Bengal to prevent depredations by various insurgent groups of the northeast and Inter-Services Intelligence.

Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani has recently written to Chief Minister Jyoti Basu that his ministry had been actively considering the state's proposal for deployment of the Central Reserve Police Force to man the Sankosh railway bridge.

The state government had already deployed the Eastern Frontier Rifles to guard the railway bridge in view of the attack on railways by the northeast insurgent groups.

Official sources said Advani had also agreed in principle to a proposal to raise a force like the Indo-Tibet Border Police for manning the Indo-Nepal border.

The sources said the ISI and various insurgent groups had been using Nepal and Bangladesh as their base for carrying out depredations in India.

North Bengal, having border with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Assam, had particularly become vulnerable because of the extensive use of Siliguri and Jalpaiguri as ingress and egress routes by ISI agents and members of the insurgent groups.

The sources said the state government is perturbed over the report that Pakistan-trained and ISI-backed United Liberation Front of Asom militants had already imparted arms training to three batches of the Kamtapuri Liberation Force. The KLF is the underground organisation of the Kamtapuri Peoples Party, which had been demanding a separate state in the North Bengal region.

The state government is also worried over army reports that the ULFA and some Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam guerrillas had been imparting arms training to non-Assamese youths in their camps in Bhutan.

Of the three KLO batches, one was trained in a forest in Jalpaiguri district, while the other two in Bhutan.

After the training, the KLO militants had been taken to Assam for carrying out insurgency operations as ULFA apprentices.

One of the ULFA trainers, a sector commander who is blind and trained in Karachi, was recently arrested by the state police from Jalpaiguri.

''He has a computer-like memory and is responsible for the blast in New Jalpaiguri railway station. He has now been handed over to the Assam police,'' a senior official said.

The official said though the police were able to arrest five to six top KLO activists including its leader Jiban Singh, they were yet to recover any sophisticated assault rifles from them.

The KLO activists had been extorting money from the local people in North Bengal and had already abducted three people to raise funds for buying arms and ammunition.

The official said that in their latest operation two Railway Protection Force jawans and a railway employee had been killed and about Rs 900,000 looted.

''They used assault rifles and it was clear from the way they had hit their targets that the entire operation was conducted by ULFA militants, who had accompanied the KLO rebels,'' the official said.

Faced with the daunting task, the state government had decided to strengthen its force in North Bengal.

''We have not only decided to create more police stations in North Bengal but also raise a special commando force to tackle the militants,'' the official said.

The state government had also sounded a red alert in North Bengal following reports that the ULFA was likely to intensify its operations in the Bengal districts bordering Assam.

The official said the ULFA, finding it increasingly difficult to carry out its operations in Assam in view of the army operation there, had been forcing the KLO to raise funds for the banned outfit.

The Bhutan government had so far preferred to ignore the ULFA activities in its territory. However, it has now decided to take effective measures against the rebels following reports that the ULFA had also been training locals.

UNI

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