A news story about an attempted abduction landed in our newsroom on a sultry evening of August. Normally such news are considered run of the mill, because during the two decades old insurgency in Assam abductions became so rampant that hardly they arouse any interest among journalist community. Official records have it that during the decade from 2001 to 2010 a total of 18,828 people were kidnapped, of whom only 16,402 could return home, obviously after paying the ransom amount, and 2426 could not return home. Official records have no mention about their whereabouts.
But there was an element of news even for the journalists who lost curiosity in such stories, because those behind this abduction plan were not from any of the myriad insurgent groups of Assam. They were members of a professional gang who do kidnap for the insurgent groups in lieu of a payment. There was no report about any such professional kidnappers' gang working in the regional state earlier. The report showed how deep the criminalization of society in Assam has seeped during the past two decades of insurgency.
One member of the gang, Dayal Das alias Rahul, disclosed before police that they were assigned the task to abduct a tea garden owner who was in the city that night. The assignment had come from the insurgent group acronymed NDFB (this group is demanding that a particular geographical area of Assam be carved out as a separate state). The insurgent groups's so-called chief commander was arrested in Bangladesh last year and after being handed over to India is now lodged in jail. The professional kidnappers' gang in question came in contact with this group through one of its member who happened to be a relative of a small time commander of the insurgent group. If they had accomplished the task and handed over the affluent businessman to the insurgent group, they would have got a brand new car as the compensation, Dayal revealed.
There were three boys and two girls in the gang. Girls would pose as call girls and try to trick their prey to fall into a trap laid in a hotel. After the prey comes into the hotel he is made to eat some tranquilizing material mixed in the food which makes him unconscious and then he is easily handed over to the contact person of the outfit which had entrusted them the 'job'.
A stark example of how the prolonged militancy has affected the minds of teenagers in the state was seen in a remote village near Balipara in Sonitpur district. In the town of Balipara a middle level trader receives a demand note, threatening to pay a particular amount or face the music. The trader approaches the police, investigation starts and at last it comes out that none other but two students of the village high school were the sender of the demand note, which many refer as 'love letter' in jest. The act of the students has landed both in jail.
Another incident of Guwahati is really heart rendering. Some youths conspired to abduct somebody for ransom and their eyes set on the son of their neighbour, who is not so affluent but manages his family by a small business of steel almirah. They abducted the son, wrote a letter demanding Rs. 1.5 million and set a deadline of nine days. The trader didn't complied and the son never returned home. In later police investigation it was found that the youths had killed the son of the trader, and to hide the body they cut it into several parts and put into a bag, which they threw into a lake outside the city and thought that they will get away with the murder easily. It is noteworthy that none of the youths was a habituated criminal, but the long drawn militancy in the state attracted them to direct violence.
These are not exceptional incidents of non-hard core criminals found involvement in the crime like abduction. Hardly a week passes when such incidents are not reported. In fact the people in the state have become so habituated of these incidents that they hardly raise a concern they would have raised in some peaceful state of India.
One Rohan Dutta was abducted in the month of October last year from his Guwahati residence. None other than his neighbour Parashar Dutta, a science student in a city college, was found to be behind this. Police had busted the case and arrested all the six youths involved in the incidence. These reports reflect how deeply the society has been criminalized in Assam.
An example from the Assam-Nagaland border village is enlightening. Three cadres of Naga insurgent group NSCN (IM) surrendered before Indian army in a cantonment in Assam. Curiously, two of the surrendering youths were from Bodo community (an Assam community claiming to be the oldest inhabitants of Assam) while the third was from the neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh. Normally all the members of a militant group are drawn from the particular ethnic community around which it is organised or whose cause it claims to espouse. But here we are seeing a Naga group recruiting youths from other communities. The surrendering youths confessed that they joined the banned group only for a regular monthly income. Thus Assam watchers are wondering whether the insurgents have of late started raising regular armies?.
Every kidnapping in the state is done in the name of rebel groups. So more ultra groups are there, more the kidnappers feel safe, because it leaves the law enforcing agencies wondering about which group is involved in the case in hand. Anurag Tankha, a senior police official stationed in the upper Assam town of Jorhat, says ninety percent of abductions and demand notes are fake, means they are not the work of the rebels. The scare of prolonged insurgency has enrooted so deeply that mostly after getting a demand note a person choose not to report it to the police. Those cases go without investigation. Non reporting of cases have become a blessing in disguise for the fake insurgents, says another police official.
"As of now the insurgents have become so weak that they even started 'outsourcing' the conduction of subversive activities like planting of a bomb device. In such a scenario it is very risky for them to kidnap a person and keep him for days till a ransom is paid," said the official.
Tinsukia district of Assam, adjoining hilly Arunachal Pradesh, has become hotbed of abductions most of which are, say the police officials, conducted by petty criminals. Abductors here take their hostage to the dense forests of Tarani and find sufficient time to exhaust the relatives of the hostage mentally. In the last week of July this year two small tea garden owner brothers, Bhagawati Prasad and Vijay Sharma , were abducted while they were on their way to the garden. Police was criticized in the media when it said that the kidnappings were the handiwork of petty criminals. Commentators asked when the police was not in a position to control even the petty criminals, how it would be expected to deal with the insurgents, who are invariably better organised the criminals. Some experts opine that the kidnappers in this district hand over their hostage to the Ulfa (anti-talks faction) and it is the Ulfa which negotiates and extort money from the kins of the hostage. Meanwhile, in a typical manner the kidnapped tea garden owner returned after some days of hostage, believably after paying a ransom. It would never be clear whether the abduction was from an insurgent group or petty criminals.
Journalist and analyst in Guwahati Satyanand Pathak says although, of late, insurgency related violence is on the wane, ordinary apolitical youths have been attracted to criminal activities like hostage taking. Is it due to the growing trend of public felicitation of yesterday's masterminds of murders, abductions and extortions, wonders Pathak. Pathak is indicating towards felicitation of pro-talks leaders of the Ulfa last year.
