'GJM hand in glove with northeast militants'

Saibal Gupta, TNN, Jun 13, 2017, KOLKATA: On June 8, when chief minister Mamata Banerjee was going to Darjeeling Raj Bhawan for her first cabinet meeting in the Hills, she hardly had any idea that Bhanu Bhawan -the official headquarter of Gorkha Territorial Administration -had literally turned into a fortress then. Not only more than 1,000 Gorkha Liberation Army (GLA) cadres and members of Gorkhaland Personnel (GLP) stationed themselves in and around the administrative building, the buildings was also loaded with stones, catapults, bottles and inflammable substances, a recent report submitted to the state home department said.

According to the report, GLA -a militant group having its presence in Mirik and Darjeeling -was instrumental in creating the trouble on June 8. The group was strongly assisted by GLP, a frontal organisation of GJM banned by the UPA government in 2013. "When Mamata Banerjee was shown black flags on June 7, the district administration should have been more careful but they took it lightly and so Army had to be called in to control the situation," a senior police officer now in charge of Darjeeling said.

The report also said that GLA had meticulously planned the design of attack, which came as a surprise to the police -mainly from the plains -who had no idea of countering the attack. "GLA, a militant group formed by a former CISF jawan Ajay Daval and Rudra Acharya, a youth from Mirik, got its arms training from `Black Widow' -another outfit formed by Niranjan Hojai and Jewel Gorlosa and mainly operating in Assam-Nagaland border. At least 20 batch of GLA cadres, with 15 cadres in each batch, took their training in the hilly terrain of Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts of Assam.Both these districts are on the border of Nagaland," the report said.

Though GLA was formed in 2004, it had to stay underground because of paucity of funds. In 2014, after CID arrested Umesh Karmi, who worked as the driver of GJM chief Bimal Gurung, with a huge consignment of arms, they came to know about GLA and its supply of funds.

"Before June 8, the relation between GJM and GLA was not so obvious but now it has become ap parent," the report said.

The CID, in 2014, also submitted a report to the state home department which said that some leaders in Darjeeling were trying to rebuild the armed group -`Gorkha Liberation Army'. The report also said the GJM has split and one of the two groups is preparing for a fresh armed struggle.Members of GJM youth wing, Gorkha Yuva Morcha, are disillusioned with the leadership and have allegedly talked about a fresh movement for Gorkhaland, the report read. Now that the GLA and GLP have joined hands, they have a huge cache of arms and money in their hands, the unrest in the hills is far from over.
(Source & Courtesy: The Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/gjm-hand-in-glove-with-northeast-militants/articleshow/59121028.cms)