Acting on the inputs provided by central intelligence agencies, a Police team headed by Assam Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG-Central Western Range) G.P. Singh was dispatched to Bangalore. Singh’s team camped in the city for almost a week, looking for Garlossa. On June 4, in an early morning joint raid with Bangalore Police, Garlossa was arrested from a posh gym in the Arekere area along Bannerghata Road in the southern part of this city. Subsequently the same team arrested Garlossa’s associate Partha Warisa alias Ashringdaw Warisa, and Samir Ahmed, an employee of a private bank in Bangalore. Samir, who hails from Assam’s Dibrugarh district is a classmate of Partha Warisa and had arranged for the rented accommodation and the driving licence for Jewel Garlossa. A fake identity card, a laptop, bank documents and an internet data card were recovered from the arrested persons. All three have since been brought to Assam and are currently being interrogated.

Within hours of Garlossa’s arrest, Assam Police shot down the outfit’s ‘finance secretary’ Frankie Dimasa in an encounter in the Borbari locality of Guwahati city, adjoining state capital Dispur. While three other BW cadres managed to flee, Police recovered a foreign-made pistol from the possession of the slain militant. Frankie Dimasa had been arrested in March 2009, but had jumped bail.

DGP Srivastava disclosed further, on June 6, that the BW, which already owns two ‘properties’ in Nepal, was looking to establish a base in Bangladesh in connivance with the Ranjan Daimary faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), the Bodo insurgent group in Assam, which is in a state of ceasefire with the Government of India since 2004. A week before his death in the Guwahati encounter on June 4, Frankie Dimasa had gone to Bangladesh to meet Daimary. “Frankie spoke to Ranjan Daimary for accommodation of 30 senior cadres of the BW to stay in the three-four small NDFB camps there. Other cadres were to take orders by staying in India”, the DGP revealed. BW’s planned foray into Bangladesh at the present juncture, however, appears somewhat surprising, considering the new Awami League Government’s declared intentions of acting against the north-eastern militants.

Since its formation in 2004, taking maximum advantage of the hilly and forested terrain of the district (over 94 percent of the 4,890 square kilometre area of NC Hills falls under the ‘forested area’ category), the BW has grown from strength to strength. After the parent group, the Dima Halim Daogah (DHD), announced a ceasefire with the Government of India on January 1, 2004, Garlossa, then ‘commander-in-chief’ of the outfit, revolted against Chairman Dilip Nunisa’s unilateral decision to opt for truce and formed the BW or DHD – Jewel Garlossa faction. From a rag tag formation with about 50 cadres, under the leadership of 36 year old Jewel Garlossa, BW evolved into the most potent fringe armed group in Assam, with 150 armed cadres possessing 40 AK series rifles and an equal number of support cadres. The group has been involved in 19 killings in the first five months of 2009, including those of 11 special force personnel.

Over the years, the BW also led several campaigns against its parent grouping, the DHD, as well as against Kuki civilians in the NC Hills district and the Karbi population in the neighbouring Karbi Anglong district, and also engaged in sporadic warfare with the Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), the militant formation claming to represent the Karbi tribals. BW militants have also killed or injured Hindi-speaking petty traders and labourers in the NC Hills district from time to time.

BW has also been involved in a continuing and bitter fight with Zeme Naga tribals since March 2009. The conflict, which also involved retaliation by the Naga militants, has led to the death of over 30 persons and has displaced over 1,700 people from their homes. On early June 3, a day before Jewel Garlossa was picked up from Bangalore, BW militants gunned down five persons including two children and burnt down 54 houses in Borchenam basti, a Zeme Naga inhabited village under Haflong Police Station.
In addition to these campaigns of bloodshed, two ongoing Central projects — the INR Eight billion East-West Corridor highway project, 180 kilometres of which pass through Assam, and the INR 10 billion Lumding-Silchar broad gauge railway project— and half-a-dozen small cement plants in the district, have also been the top targets of BW attacks. Seven attacks on the railway services in the first five months of the current year have resulted in a complete halt to the running of trains through the district since May. Authorities fear that a prolonged disruption of the train services would create a shortage of essential commodities in the neighbouring States of Mizoram and Tripura, which receive a bulk of their supplies through this route.

BW has benefited immensely from the politician-militant nexus, a phenomenon rampant in the entire northeastern region. On May 30, the chief of the North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council (NCHAC), Mohet Hojai, belonging to the local Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC) political party, was arrested on charges of passing on INR 10 million to the BW for the purchase of arms. The Assam and Meghalaya Police had recovered the cash from militants in Guwahati in March 2009, leading to the revelation of Hojai’s militant association. Hojai had gone underground, but resurfaced on May 22 to hold a Press Conference at Haflong, a sub-divisional township in the NC Hills district. Surprisingly, he was not arrested. After his arrest on May 30, Hojai is in judicial custody, along with R.H. Khan, a Joint Director in the Social Welfare Department of the Assam Government, who is believed to be the kingpin of the entire racket.

Incidentally, the recent successes have been achieved after Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram summoned the Assam DGP and Chief Secretary to New Delhi on June 1, for discussions on the security situation in the NC Hills district. Subsequently, the National Investigative Agency (NIA), the central body constituted after the November 2008 multiple terrorist attacks in Mumbai, was given its first case, investigating the nexus between the politicians and the militants in the NC Hills district. The NIA has reportedly sought permission from Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to interrogate two ministers of the State Cabinet, who allegedly had close links with both Mohet Hojai and R.H. Khan.

Significant portions of the enormous developmental funds made available to the district authorities inevitably end up in the coffers of the militant groups. Reports have indicated that at least 20 per cent of the annual funds allocated to the NCHAC, set up under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution to run the 30 administrative departments in the district, finds its way into the coffers of six outfits operating in the district – the Isak-Muivah and Khaplang factions of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the DHD, the BW, the Dimasa National Liberation Front, the Kuki National Front (KNF) and the Hmar People’s Convention – Democracy (HPC-D). Depending on the size of the Annual Plan of the NCHAC, every year the outfits receive up to INR 1.3 to 1.6 billion. For the 2007-08 financial year, the total Annual Plan allocation for the NCHAC was INR 9.5 billion. In addition, the militants impose ‘taxes’, amounting to 10 per cent on the monthly salary of every government official, 20 per cent on earnings of businessmen and a fixed sum of INR 500 from petty traders in the district.

The Assam Police hopes that the neutralisation of the three top leaders of BW will push the group into a position of weakness. For many insurgent groups in the northeast, especially those active within limited geographical areas, lone leaders remain central to the day to day operations of the formations. Jewel Garlossa, however, appears to have done well in terms of grooming a set of second-rung leaders within BW. While Garlossa mostly stationed himself outside Assam and was trying to manage the grouping’s outreach programme in Nepal and Bangladesh, the second rung leaders were in charge of the outfit’s activities in the NC Hills district.

Nevertheless, the neutralisation  of the top leadership will send the BW into a temporary state of shock and disarray, and a diminution of activities over the coming months can be expected. BW’s planned foray into Bangladesh would be halted for the time being. The group is, however, far from a state of extinction; its infrastructure within the district is still intact and it continues to have a cohesive set of leaders on the ground, who are completely familiar with the day to day operations of the outfit.

A senior NC Hills Police officer thus observed, “We cannot afford to rest until we neutralise the remaining leadership,” adding, further, that a crucial part of the operation would also be to locate and recover the large sums of money that Garlossa was holding: “We have to make sure it doesn’t fall in the hands of those still at large.”

Counter-insurgency operations in Assam have predominantly remained United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) centric, pursuing the oldest and the most dominant militant formation in the state. This has, in turn, allowed fringe formations like the BW to flourish and wreak havoc in their own areas of dominance for years. The lack of adequate special force presence gave the BW a free run all over the district. The group’s increased activities, especially, its relentless attacks on the train services in 2009, however, brought about a visible augmentation in force presence in the NC Hills district. Over 50,000 security personnel are currently deployed in the district, including personnel from the army, Assam Rifles, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Assam Police and the Railway Protection Force. In addition, there are over 700 Special Police Officers (SPOs) deployed to provide additional security cover to firms engaged in the railway and highway projects.

The Assam Police feels that the key to the complete neutralisation of BW would be a swift operation targeting the remnants of the group. The State Police Headquarters has reportedly asked the District Police to provide information about the group’s hideouts so that an all-out thrust could be mounted against these.

This will be no easy task. Operations against the BW would have to be a protracted effort that spans the NC Hills district as well as the neighbouring Karbi Anglong and Nagaon districts. Forces across inter-state borders with Meghalaya and Nagaland will also have to be involved in the operation. The biggest weakness in such an endeavor will continue to be the Police in NC Hills district, which has neither the numbers nor the skill to lead an anti - BW campaign. The lack of intelligence support from the District Police would mean that the planned special force operations would simply be a show of strength by the Army and the para - military, rather than a precision campaign that dismantles BW’s infrastructure and strength. BW cadres can be expected to simply disappear underground under pressure, but once the forces withdraw, they can once again resurface and return to their violent ways.

Dr. Bibhu Prasad Routray