THE STATES

Separatist terror

In a bid to further its separatist cause, the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation targets leaders and workers of the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal.

KALYAN CHAUDHURI
in Kolkata

TERRORISM is making its way into West Bengal from the neighbouring States of Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam. While the Left extremist People's War (P.W.) has established a base of sorts for itself in south Bengal, the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO), an underground separatist outfit, has been active in north Bengal with the help of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). That West Bengal is becoming vulnerable to terrorism and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which leads the ruling Left Front, is turning out to be the main target of terrorist strikes is indicated by the recent KLO action at Dhupguri in Jalpaiguri district of north Bengal.

On August 17, in an operation at dusk, KLO militants stormed into the CPI(M) office at Dhupguri and shot dead five party members. Fifteen of the 20 party members present were seriously injured in the well-planned attack. The first person to die in the attack was Gopal Chaki, a district-level CPI(M) leader and a Jalpaiguri zilla parishad member in charge of the Public Works Department. The attack came when a meeting of the Krishak Sabha was on in the party office, located in the bazaar area. Saturday being the weekly market day, the area was crowded. According to eye-witnesses, three militants armed with automatic weapons arrived in front of the party office on bicycles, stormed in and opened fire before escaping on three motorcycles that were waiting outside.

Anil Biswas, secretary of the CPI(M)'s West Bengal unit, blamed the KLO for the "planned strike" and said the Dhupguri incident was a conspiracy of forces opposed to the Left Front in the State. He said that they were out to weaken the Left movement in West Bengal. A bandh was observed in four districts of north Bengal on August 19 following a call issued by the CPI(M) and other Left Front constituents.

Intelligence sources said the operation was carried out by the KLO, an underground militant wing of the Kamtapur People's Party (KPP), which was formed six years ago to work for a separate State for Rajbongshis, covering the districts of Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, North and South Dinajpur and Malda. The KPP's demands also include recognition to the Kamtapuri language and "resettlement" of residents who arrived in the region after 1971. Supporters of the KPP, largely people of Rajbongshi origin, consider themselves indigenous to the region and feel that they should be granted the right to self-determination.

BESIDES being the only militant group active in the region, the KLO is also the only group of its kind to harbour a grudge against the CPI(M). It has killed many CPI(M) workers and leaders. In May 2000, the KLO made its first strike, gunning down CPI(M) leader Pranesh Pal at Barobisha in Jalpaiguri. In June 2000, two senior CPI(M) leaders, Sunil Dutta and Dilip Roy, were killed at Duramari in Jalpaiguri. In July 2000, two CPI(M) supporters, who were also schoolteachers, were killed in their classrooms at Mainaguri and Dhupguri. In October the same year, a senior lawyer and CPI(M) leader, Dipankar Ghosh, was gunned down at Bidhan Nagar in Siliguri. In 2001, KLO militants shot dead CPI(M) leader Sudhir Burman at Kumargramduar. The KLO, like ULFA, resorts to abductions and extortions to raise funds. Tea planters and businessmen of the region have become their prime targets. For instance, tea planters Roshanlal Garg, Om Prakash Agarwal and Dipankar Ghosh were kidnapped in 1999 and 2000.

KPP chief Atul Roy told Frontline that KLO attacks in north Bengal were only the beginning of a bloody battle that would hit the region before the panchayat elections in 2003. He said that the Left Front government was bound to face the wrath of the KPP and the KLO if it did not return the land to the Rajbongshis and acknowledged their demand for a separate State. The KPP, 500 of whose leaders are behind bars, is regrouping and wants to build bases in many places in the five north Bengal districts.

Before the August 17 attack, the KLO engineered, with the help of ULFA, a landmine explosion at Bhutanghat inside the Buxa Tiger Reserve. It left six jawans injured. The militants torched the Bhutanghat forest bungalow where the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was planning to establish a camp.

Anand Kumar, Jalpaiguri Additional Superintendent of Police, said: "We firmly believe that the KLO could not have carried out the attack on the CPI(M) party office at Dhupguri without help from ULFA. Going by the way the attack was carried out, we are almost sure that it was a KLO-ULFA joint operation. The police are keeping a watch over all routes to Bhutan where the militants might escape to. Both ULFA and the KLO have their bases in Bhutan and run their training camps there. From preliminary investigations, we have found out that there were five or six militants belonging to the KLO accompanied by one ULFA cadre."

The strike is significant in the wake of intelligence reports that a 31-member "action squad" of KLO and ULFA militants had entered Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar and Darjeeling districts in order to carry out strikes. The attack followed the arrest of Kamtapur Women Rights Forum chief Bharati Das, said to be the fiancee of self-styled KLO 'commander-in-chief' Jeevan Singh alias Tamir Das, in the first week of August.

The KLO's Darjeeling district "commander" Chandan Singh and his accomplice Shyamal Singh were arrested at Batasi near the Nepal border on August 17. The police and the security agencies were apprehensive that the KLO-ULFA combine would carry out a series of retaliatory strikes. Witnesses said KLO action squad chief Joy Deb Das alias Tom Adhikary, his deputy Tushar Roy, and Bijoy Roy alias Kitab Das were among the six persons involved in the attack.

With several training camps and hideouts in the dense forest areas of Bhutan close to the Indian border, ULFA and KLO militants find it convenient to carry out strikes in Assam and north Bengal and return to their bases in Bhutan through jungle routes. With the banned ULFA extending active support to the secessionist cause, the KLO has established itself in areas spread over five districts of North Bengal - Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Malda and North and South Dinajpur - around the Assam-Bhutan-West Bengal border.

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told Frontline that the government had definite information that the KLO was mobilising resources in league with ULFA to create disturbances in north Bengal. He said that the State Home department had also got information that KLO members from north Bengal were leaving in small batches through Alipurduar in Jalpaiguri district for jungle areas around the Bhutanese town of Sandrup Jhonkar, less than 10 km from the India-Bhutan border, for training in the use of arms and in guerilla warfare. Army intelligence sources have confirmed that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan has been aiding ULFA, which trains the KLO members, in various ways.

With Bhutan hesitating to crack down on the extremists, the terrorist menace in the heavily forested India-Bhutan border areas is a cause of grave concern for both the West Bengal and Central governments. A series of militant operations against security forces in Assam and West Bengal along the Bhutan border have been reported in recent months.

Soon after the August 17 attack, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee demanded that the Centre persuade the Bhutan government to participate with India in joint army operations to flush ULFA and KLO extremists out of the forests of southern Bhutan. (A similar demand was repeatedly placed before the Centre by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi.) Informed sources said that militants, who were aware of the fact that Bhutan did not have sufficient armed strength to drive them out, had converted the entire India-Bhutan border into a large training camp.

According to the estimates of the Indian Army's intelligence wing, there are 4,000 ULFA and about 1,000 KLO militants holed up in Bhutan. Another 1,000-odd ULFA members operate from Bangladesh.