Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: ULFA chief Arabinda Rajkhowa has for the first time spilled the beans on Pakistan’s backing to the Northeast militant group.
Speaking to a leading English daily, Rajkhowa - the chairman of United Liberation Front of Asom – said that Pakistani fundamentalists had lent support to the group in the past. However, he rued that the backing led to ULFA's alienation from the very people it was fighting for.
The 57-year-old Rajkhowa is currently in New Delhi along with other ULFA members to hold peace parleys with the Centre.
He told the daily that fundamentalist Pakistani elements began supplying weapons to the rebel group fighting for a separate land from 1990.
The support by Pakistani elements hurt the group’s secular ideology, the ULFA chief said. He revealed that ULFA started using arms in the absence of a democratic space.
He however acknowledged that a military solution was never an option.
Shedding light on how the weapons were brought into the Indian territory, Rajkhowa told the newspaper that sophisticated arms were first brought via sea route to Bangladesh and then transported inland in trucks.
One big consignment was caught in Chittagong, many ships were captured and in one case an entire shipload of arms was dumped into the sea to evade seizure, but many made it through, he said.
Rajkhowa was nabbed in Bangladesh in November 2009 and handed over to India.
First Published: Sunday, August 07, 2011, 09:49