New Delhi: India’s premier anti-terror agency, NIA, has started an extensive analysis of the forward and backward linkages to identify perpetrators and over ground workers (OGWs) of banned United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa-I).
A senior NIA official told ETV Bharat on Friday that the initiative will help the law enforcement agencies to detect and nab the Ulfa members and its supporters. “Analysis of forward and backward linkages will help in identifying perpetrators of violence and over ground workers (OGWs) of Ulfa (I),” the official said.
Such OGW of terrorist organisations in Jammu & Kashmir has always been a big challenge during counter terror operations. Apart from providing logistic support to the members of the terrorist organisation, such OGW also provide sensitive information of security forces to the terrorist organisation.
“As far as Assam is concerned, we have started identifying such overground workers or sympathisers of Ulfa-I,” the official said. He said that members of several NGOs and civil society organisations in Assam are also under the trader of the security agencies.
“We have inputs that people from different walks of life are helping the Ulfa-I. The recovery of several bombs during the Independence Day celebrations in Assam have substantiated our claim,” the official said.
It is worth mentioning that the security agencies in Assam especially the NIA have unearthed several bombs, planted by Ulfa-I from different places of the State.
In fact, a two-day-long anti-terror conference that concluded in New Delhi on Friday also discussed the strategy adopted by the law enforcing agencies to foil all kinds of Ulfa threats.
Asserting that association and embedding of NIA team since beginning helped the agency in avoiding several grenade attacks in November-December last year in Assam as well as unearth the IEDs planted by Ulfa-I on Independence Day this year, the official said that sharing of pointers by Assam police, technical analysis-detailed profiling by NIA, sharing of information and joint operations helped the agency in getting breakthrough in several major cases.
As far as capacity building of NIA is concerned, the official said that geographical expansion, augmentation of manpower, training programme and enhancing analytical capacity are some of the initiatives adopted by the agency to thwart all possible threats. According to the official, several anti-India elements might also try to come close to Ulfa-I for creating terror in the region.
It is worth mentioning that a member of Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has been arrested by the NIA from Assam’s Goalpara district in the recent past. The Ulfa-I earlier had its bases in Bangladesh under the patronage of the Khaleda Zia led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government.
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