Conflicting reports about fate of ULFA hostage

Mystery shrouds the fate of social worker Sanjay Ghosh, with conflicting claims about his fate.

In a two-page statement written in English and faxed to local newspaper offices late on Tuesday night, the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom said Ghose, whom it abducted on July 4, had drowned in the Brahmaputra river while being escorted to its zonal headquarters on July 8. The statement was issued on ULFA's letterhead.

However, another statement written in Assamese in Daimari's name on Wednesday said Ghose was alive in ULFA's custody. It described the previous statement in his name as "baseless", spread by a section that had no responsibility and concern about the life and death of people.

The second statement issued from Jorhat also said that ULFA had not issued any statement about Ghose and that it was not the organisation's viewpoint.

Ghose, secretary, Association of Voluntary Agencies of Rural Development (North-East), was kidnapped from the Majuli river island when he travelled there to oversee a relief project.

In Tuesday's statement faxed to a local newspaper, Daimari had said the canoe ferrying Ghose and two ULFA activists had capsized in the swollen river.

ULFA, Daimari said, expressed sorrow over Ghose's death. "We differentiate his individual activities from that of his NGO, which is supposed to work for the welfare of the rural people," he said in the earlier statement which he retracted hours later.

The ULFA official had claimed that his organisation instituted a two-man special inquiry committee on November 4 to "investigate" Ghose's alleged association with General A K Sawhney, the general-officer-commanding, 4 Corp, Major General Jolly Mukherjee of the Second Mountain Division and Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) Bipul Kalita.

Several international organisations had appealed to ULFA to release Ghose, who even though he was just 38, had built an impressive reputation for social activism. In Tuesday's statement, Daimari hoped that the international NGOs would ''come out in the same spirit'' to express similar concern about the killing of several hundred civilians in Assam since 1990.

UNI