NDFB chief gets life imprisonment in 2008 Assam blasts case: Tracing Ranjan Daimary's journey to achieve 'sovereignty'

Ranjan Daimary, former rebel chief of the proscribed National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) in Assam, has been found guilty of involvement in the serial blasts of 2008 in Assam that left 88 people dead and around 500 injured. Along with Daimary, nine others were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Guwahati.

The chain of events leading to this climax began in 2010 after Daimary alias DR Nabla was nabbed in Bangladesh and handed over to India. He was released from jail three years later after he expressed willingness for a negotiated settlement with the government.

NDFB has since split into three factions, with the largest group headed by general secretary Govinda Basumatary also engaged in negotiations with the government. The smallest faction, which is opposed to talks, has camps in northern Sagaing Division of Myanmar.

Before being apprehended in 2010, Daimary hopped across all the neighbouring countries for more than two decades, where he not only pitched tent and established training facilities but also cultivated deep contacts for procuring arms and ammunition.

Sojourns in Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar

Born on 21 February, 1960, in the central Assam district of Udalguri, Daimary’s radical ideas began to galvanise after his matriculation from St Anthony’s College in Shillong, considered a premier educational institute in the region. His plans to form a rebel outfit began to take shape in 1984 when he came into contact with NSCN functionaries who advised him to write letters to their leaders.

Daimary’s plan was to reach the NSCN headquarters in Myanmar, which he soon did after founding the Bodo Security Force (BSF) in 1986 (later rechristened as NDFB). But he failed in his objective of securing assistance from the Naga leaders following ULFA’s plea that all rebels from Assam must be represented under a single banner.

Daimary returned from Myanmar and headed straight to Bhutan for establishing a camp at Kaurong-Dwifam, where the first batch of the outfit was trained. The camp received some top leaders of the NSCN’s Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) faction such as Thuingaleng Muivah, Isak Chisi Swu and Angellus Shimray, after a split in the organisation in Myanmar. At the camp, the leaders decided to cooperate and share information about sources of weapons among themselves.

The search for weapons took Daimary and the NSCN(IM) functionaries to Kathmandu and then to Bangladesh in 1993, where he set up camps at Ali Kadam, Rangamati and Khagrachari. By then, a new coalition of rebel groups in the Northeast, called the Self Defence United Front of South East Asian Himalayan Region, had been formed, which resulted in the sharing of training facilities in Bangladesh.

In 1997, the first consignment of weapons from China had landed at Bangladesh which was transported from Cox’s Bazar to different locations in Assam. Soon, NDFB struck terror in Assam through a series of killings and ambushes triggering large-scale panic in the districts on the north bank of the Brahmaputra. The presence in Bhutan was expanded to eight camps, where two battalions were stationed. But, alarm bells began ringing after the NDFB and ULFA were told in categorical terms by the Bhutan government to vacate the kingdom. Fortunately, Daimary was in Bangladesh when Operation All Clear was launched by the Royal Bhutan Army against the camps in late 2003.

But in Bangladesh as well, the situation was not as safe as it had been in the 1990s after the pro-India Awami League-led government swept to power late in 2008. There was no option but to shift to Myanmar and a missive to NSCN(K) for setting up camps elicited a positive response. Cadres were shifted and camps were established within a year in Myanmar’s Naga-inhabited region, but further plans went awry after Daimary was apprehended in Bangladesh.

What triggered the serial blasts?

During an interview with this correspondent four years ago, Daimary spoke at length on multiple issues, but he was reluctant to discuss the serial blasts in Assam believed to have been masterminded by the NDFB. Sources close to him deny his involvement and said that an appeal would be filed in Gauhati High Court against the judgment.

The actual sequence of events that led to the massacre is yet to be unraveled, which has fueled speculation about the involvement of foreign agencies.

A couple of hours after the blasts on 30 October, 2008, some TV news channels were in no doubt that the Harkat-ul-jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) was involved in the episode, which it executed in a joint operation with ULFA. That HUJI had a presence in Bangladesh was never in doubt but its links with ULFA and other ethnic rebel outfits from the Northeast were doubtful.

A senior police officer claimed that the investigation gathered crucial leads on the involvement of NDFB from the call records of some of their functionaries who were tasked to plan and select the spots and arrange the logistics for the operation.

Some government officials have also argued that the blasts coincided with the tenure of the army’s caretaker government in Bangladesh, which was perceived to be drawing close to New Delhi. They are of the opinion that the operation was orchestrated by Pakistan’s ISI after a meeting with the NDFB at a remote location in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) where the agency agreed to provide the training and explosives.

It may be mentioned that the NDFB had trained two batches in the Af-Pak region of Pakistan between 1998-2000 in advanced techniques of guerrilla warfare. NDFB functionaries claimed that the links with Pakistan were established at the embassy in Dhaka and not through ULFA as some reports have suggested.

(Rajeev Bhattacharyya is a senior journalist in Guwahati.)