Guwahati, Dec. 30: Two more lives were lost today in a revenge attack by Ulfa militants on a former comrade who they thought was helping security forces in counter-insurgency operations.

Police said Ulfa militants fired on Bijoy Shankar Hazarika and his wife Anita when they were on their way to Nalbari town on a motorcycle around 11.30 this morning. Anita died where she fell and her critically wounded husband while being shifted from Nalbari to Gauhati Medical College and Hospital. Both were in their thirties.

The couple’s seven-year-old son was with them when the two assailants — also on a motorbike — opened fire. The boy escaped unscathed. The incident occurred at Khatikuchi, under Ghograpar police station.

It was the second attack on a formet Ulfa militant’s family in the span of 10 days. On December 19, Ulfa members lobbed a grenade through a ventilator inside the bedroom of a surrendered militant, Tileswar Lahon, at Moran in Upper Assam. Lahon and his wife Jyoti were wounded.

Security arrangements for threatened former militants across the state have been beefed up. Ulfa has been accusing a group of deserters — collectively known by the acronym Sulfa — of conspiring with security forces. The outfit’s suspicion stems from the fact that most of the state’s 1500 special police officers, appointed for gathering intelligence, are former militants.

Lahon was on Ulfa’s “hit list” for quite some time with the outfit directly accusing him of being involved in the killing of Charan Majhi, a senior member of its 28 Battalion. Charan Majhi died in an encounter with security forces.

The police said surrendered militants in Nalbari district fell foul of Ulfa after the death of Sabitri Rajbongshi, the 60-year-old mother of one of its members — Bhaskar Rajbongshi — at the hands of a team of police and Central Reserve Police Force personnel.

Two former Ulfa members, Mrinal Goswami and Sanjay Das, had accompanied the team to Rajbongshi’s house on September 8 in the capacity of special police officers.

Since Hazarika was not a special police officer, why he was killed is a mystery. A police officer said he had been leading a simple life as a sales tax employee.

A group of masked men on motorbikes had attacked an Ulfa leader’s house in Dibrugarh district earlier this month in what was seen as retaliation to the killing of surrendered militant in the same area a few hours earlier.

Ulfa member Madhurjya Gohain’s parents Bhabani Neog and Aghuni Neog, both in their seventies, sister-in-law Mousumi and her three children barely escaped being roasted alive .