Jayanti Brahma and other arrested NDFB cadres at Goalpara police station on Monday. Picture by Ashraful Alam

Dhubri, Dec. 29: An arrested member of the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) has claimed that the outfit’s hardline leader, Ranjan Daimary, had himself handed over the timers used in the October 30 serial blasts in Guwahati.

A “sergeant major” of the NDFB, Jayanti Brahma, who was arrested along with five others on Friday during an extortion attempt in Goalpara district, has confessed that Daimary gave her the timers at the outfit’s Thamthim camp in Bangladesh on October 1.

The six were waiting to strike a deal for money when police arrested them acting on specific information. Jayanti made the revelations during interrogation by the CBI and state police.

“This is for the first time after the serial blasts in Assam that the police have been able to get specific information about the involvement of Ranjan Daimary in the blasts,” Goalpara superintendent of police Akhilesh Singh said. The revelations assume significance because investigations had reached a dead end with the main accused absconding. “We expect them to reveal more which would then help us ascertain the conspiracy part of the blasts,” he said.

Before Jayanti, another NDFB cadre, “sergeant” Aghai Basumatary, who was arrested along with her, had told interrogators that he had received instructions from Daimary to carry out the blast at Ganeshguri.

The police official said Jayanti had left the Thamthim camp in early August and reached Kokrajhar in the first week of September. Before leaving the camp, Daimary had given her a packet containing the timer devices, which she carried to Kokrajhar before passing it on to a “top-rung NDFB leader”.

He said on arriving at Kokrajhar, Jayanti started gathering the explosives from various sources and got the bombs manufactured by the explosives experts in the first week of September. She then also selected and finalised the target locations for the blasts by the end of the month.

Jayanti finally handed over the bombs to those who planted it at select locations in Kokrajhar and Barpeta Road.

Aghai Basumatary said he left Thamthim camp in Khakrichari in Bangladesh on October 1 and reached Guwahati on October 25. He entered India through the porous border along the Garo Hills of Meghalaya and proceeded to Guwahati on bus.

In here, Basumatary stayed in a house owned by Tarun Talukdar, a dentist, at Lakhiminagar in Hatigaon and rented by John Basumatary. John had introduced himself as a graduate who was job hunting in Guwahati.

Basumatary said he took four days to assemble and fit the bomb in a gas cylinder. He then took the bomb to Ganeshguri in a car and set the time. He waited for the blast and then left the area.

Sources said the submission of case diaries in Assamese to the CBI could delay the probe into the October 30 serial blast case. They said though Assam police handed over the case diaries to the CBI team in Guwahati yesterday, the investigating agency, which is now in charge of the probe, will have to translate the contents first. Around 30 sleuths are on the job, the sources added.