Assam rebel leader loses Indian government job

By Subir Bhaumik

Mr Barua is the only senior Ulfa leader at large

Calcutta, Jan 10 :  Indian Railways has finally sacked a separatist leader from a job he held with them for 29 years despite being absent from work since January 1980.

Paresh Barua, the head of the military wing of the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa), has been working with the railways as a "traffic porter".

The railways said they did not know if the man in question was the Ulfa leader, but his family said it was him.

Mr Barua is blamed for dozens of bomb blasts, attacks and killings in Assam.

Ulfa rebels have fought for a separate Assamese homeland since 1979.

A mystery
"Paresh Barua has been removed from work and a notice has been put up in Tinsukia railway station where he last worked," Northeast Frontier Railway spokesman S Hajong told the BBC.

Mr Hajong said the long absence of Paresh Barua from his work was noticed in the records and a notice was issued to him on 21 December.

The rebel leader was asked to appear before the railway authorities by 6 January or face the sack.

Ulfa has been blamed for a string of attacks in Assam

"Now that he did not appear, the railways sacked him."

It remains a mystery why it took the railways so long to sack the separatist leader.

The only explanation Mr Hajong offered was that they had to do it "the legal way".

"But we don't know if the Paresh Barua sacked by us and the Ulfa military wing chief are one and the same," he said.

Mr Barua's family, however, confirmed that the sacked railway employee was indeed the rebel leader.

"The sack letter has now come to our home address. It is true my brother Paresh worked as a railway porter in 1978-79 and he did work at Tinsukia station," said Mission Baruah, the Ulfa leader's younger brother, from his village Jeraigaon, near the northern Assam town of Tinsukia.

Mr Barua said his brother had got the job as a sportsman and had represented the railways as the goalkeeper in their soccer team.

He held the job until he went underground and formed the rebel group along with other Assamese youths.

Last pay
"Assam was in the midst of a powerful campaign against illegal migrants from Bangladesh and my brother was very upset with the police excesses against the supporters of the agitation.

"That influenced him to take the extreme course of setting up a guerrilla organisation that changed his life," Mr Barua said.

Paresh Barua's last pay drawn from the railways in December 1979 was 370 rupees ($8), but the rebel leader is now believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars in donations from his supporters.

After the crackdown against the Ulfa in Bangladesh last year, Mr Barua is reported to have fled the country which was his home for the last two decades. He is now believed to be hiding somewhere in south-east Asia.

Many of those who founded the Ulfa with him, including the group's chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, were recently arrested in Dhaka and handed over to India.