Cops fret about NE ultras’ Siliguri hideout plans

SNS, Siliguri, 22 September: The police department is concerned about the trend of militant outfits from the Northeast to prefer Siliguri and its surrounding areas as a safe haven.

A gateway to the Northeast, the Siliguri area and the region are surrounded by borders of Nepal, Bagladesh, Bhutan, and also China in Sikkim. Police say the cosmopolitan character of the town makes it easier for outsiders to get assimilated into the local populace, and this provides a perfect cover to the ultras.

"The town with its geographic location has already become a preferred corridor for banned extremist groups in their passage to Bhutan, Bangladesh or Nepal from Northeastern states. For more than a decade, many important operatives have been arrested from Siliguri," said a senior police official here.

A suspected operative of the banned Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA), Solly Sangma, 32, was arrested from the Salbari area near Siliguri on 19 September, while in 2012, some cadres of the Manipur-based People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) were arrested from Siliguri.

An operative of the Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL), Ningthoujam Tomba, was arrested from Khaprail in 2010, and the general secretary of the GNLA, Novembirth Ch. Marak, was arrested at the New Jalpaiguri railway station on 16 May 2010.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which had investigated the activities of the KKYL in the Darjeeling Hills in 2011 following the arrest of some KKYL activists from the region, found that the outfit had been using residents of Darjeeling and Sikkim to set up bases in the region, a police officer said.

In 2004, the then Maoist rebel leader of Nepal Mohan Baidya was arrested from a hideout in Siliguri.

"Location makes this region a preferred choice for militants. The outfits use the town and its outskirts as hideouts. Police are concerned about the developments and are keeping a tab on the movement of people to see if any insurgent outfit is trying to set up its base in the region," the officer said.