GUWAHATI, DEC 23: The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), which has stepped up activities in the past two weeks, has now deployed a crack ``action group'' with the intention of targeting VVIPs including Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

Documents recovered by the police following an encounter with a group of militants at Barhampur in Nagaon district of central Assam on Saturday, revealed that two such ``action groups'' armed with sophisticated weapons have infiltrated into the state from the Bhutan jungles and were on the prowl to attack select targets.

In fact the encounter at Barhampur itself involved one of the groups which left five persons dead including three militants and a nine-year old girl. The crack action group is believed to be headed by Raju Baruah, a self-styled captain, who had issued letters to two group leaders on May 24 directing them to look for opportunities to hit at ``big'' targets.While one of the two groups is believed to be in the Shonitpur district where the four corps of the army has its headquarters, the other group is said to have been despatched to Nagaon, the home district of the chief minister. Incidentally, Mahanta visits Barhampur, his constituency, at least once a week.

Giving details of the contents of the ULFA captain's letter to the leaders of the action group, Nagaon deputy commissioner S Abbasi said that the militants, whose movements were being monitored by the security agencies, did not stay at one place for long and moved from one place to another swiftly. Meanwhile, the ultras have also launched a diatribe agains Arundhati Ghosh, former Indian envoy to the United Nations.

ULFA's central publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary, who issued a statement to the media here last evening, said Arundhati Ghosh was engaged in a ``conspiracy'' against the rebel group and had influenced the international forums against it.

Ghosh, whose nephew and social worker Sanjoy Ghosh was abducted and murdered by the ULFA in July this year, is touring Assam to find Sanjoy's whereabouts or for clues that would confirm rumours of his death. Daimary says Arundhati's intention of visiting Assam was to ``whip up support for her campaign against the ULFA''. ``Arundhati is engaged in a conspiracy against the national struggle launched by the ULFA and has built up a lobby against it at the international level,'' Daimary's statement, issued in Assamese, said.

The Assam government has meanwhile, stepped up security for VVIPs including Arundhati Ghosh following the statement of the militant group, and has despatched a high-level security cover group to protect her while she is in the state.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.