Guwahati, Nov. 25: A day after the blast at a tea garden in Sivasagar district, police today revealed that Ulfa had served a demand of Rs 50 lakh on it sometime back.

Police sources said the blast could have been triggered because the garden had failed to comply with the demand. The low intensity blast failed to inflict any casualty but damaged a wall inside the garden.

The Assam Tea Planters Association has appealed to Dispur to provide security to the planters in the wake of the blast near the manager’s bungalow at Bishnupur tea estate under Geleky police station in Sonari subdivision, about 430km from here, last night.

Chairman of the association Abhijit Sharma, said although there was no official information, it has been learnt that several gardens, especially in Sonari, have been served extortion notices by militants for the last few months.

The association has convened an emergent executive body meeting tomorrow to discuss the prevailing situation.

A senior police officer in Sivasagar said Ulfa served the garden with an extortion notice of Rs 50 lakh around four month’s back. “We have not received any official complaint, though,” the officer said.

The officer said Ulfa was desperate to collect funds in recent times, especially after the A and C companies of the 28th battalion declared a unilateral ceasefire in June.

“Since Sivasagar falls under the jurisdiction of the B company, it is desperately trying to target businessmen in the district as it wields less clout in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts,” he said.

Last night’s attack on the garden comes close on the heels of one of the top leaders of the B company, Ram Sing, being arrested on Wednesday night. Sing was supervising the extortion drive of the outfit in the area before his arrest and had been collecting money from Sivasagar since 2005.

Sources in the tea industry said the smaller tea gardens are now facing the wrath of Ulfa with the outfit’s wider network having been dented by the relentless operations by security forces against it.

“In its heydays, Ulfa would target the gardens owned by the bigger companies and collect funds from them outside the state and even abroad in some cases. But over the last few years, the outfit has not been in a position to sustain that kind of a network or even enough clout to browbeat the bigger companies into filling its coffers,” a senior official of the Tea Association of India, said.

He said, as a result, the outfit was now turning its attention more and more to the smaller gardens, owned by local entrepreneurs, to keep itself financially afloat.