By Nava Thakuria*
PPFA expresses concern over the execution claim of ULFA-I and demands government to take serious note of it
Guwahati: The separatist militant outfit United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent (ULFA-I) claimed it executed two Assamese youths yesterday morning. It alleged that the two were spying for Assam police.
The ULFA-I move has come as a shock and the Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA)- a group of Assam Intelligentsia – has expressed grave concern over the news relating to the execution claim. It today demanded the government take a serious note of its implication. The forum of nationalist citizens also urged the media outlets, precisely the news channels, not to glorify the United Liberation Front of Assam (Independent) for its illogical actions.
Mentionable is that the banned outfit claimed yesterday morning that it has punished two of its young cadres with capital punishment. In a statement sent to media houses, the Ulfa(I) claimed that their judicial organ found Sanjiv Sarma and Dhanjit Das guilty of spying for the police and hence both of them were executed in their hideouts.
Both Sanjiv (hailing from Baihata Chairali) and Dhanjit from Barpeta in western Assam were new recruits of the outfit. The Ulfa(I) asserted that both the victims confessed their crimes (of spying) and so they were pronounced guilty in the trial held in the first week of May 2022.
Ulfa (I) military chief Paresh Barua, while speaking to some city-based satellite news channels, stated that the crime of Sanjiv and Dhanjit was unpardonable under the outfit’s constitution. So they were punished by the judicial council and accordingly executed yesterday morning.
The outfit also released two video clippings where Sanjiv and Dhanjit confessed their crime of secretly working for the police and asserted that Ulfa (I) is a revolutionary organization (not a terror outfit).
“Both the victims read out the lines (in Assamese) definitely under the gunpoint. Looking at their eyes, anyone can realize it. But shockingly the news channels continue telecasting the videos as if the Ulfa(I) did nothing wrong with punishing both the Assamese youths,” said the PPFA statement, adding that the government (precisely the police department) should make a statement over the matter.
For any reason, no one should be allowed (not to speak of glorifying the act by a section of local media) to take someone’s life under the verdict of a kangaroo court, the PPFA stated while appealing to the “conscious people of Assam” to raise their voices for justice for the victims and stand against the murder of any individual in pursuit of a so-called movement for a separate homeland for Assamese out of India.
*Senior journalist
