Siddeque Ahmed

Silchar, Aug. 18: A leading political leader of Karimganj district, now a parliamentary secretary for revenue and disaster management in the Assam cabinet, last night alleged that his adversaries had hired killers from Nagaland to eliminate him.

Siddeque Ahmed, an Independent legislator in the Assam Assembly who later supported Tarun Gogoi’s government and is at present a parliamentary secretary, said at least three “contract killers from Nagaland” were hired recently by his political adversaries.

Ahmed, however, kept the identity of his political adversaries under wraps while addressing a news conference he had hastily organised at the circuit house in Karimganj last night.

He said he came to know of the plot when one of the alleged killers, who happened to be from Karimganj, called him up from Dimapur in Nagaland and tipped him off about the conspiracy.

Ahmed said the man identified the mastermind of the conspiracy to be Haroon Abbas, a known criminal from Dimapur, but originally from Bhanga village in Karimganj district on the Indo-Bangla border.

The legislator said he had asked the deputy inspector-general of police in south Assam, A.Y.V. Krishna, and superintendent of police, Karimganj, B.P. Rava, to get in touch with Nagaland police to investigate the matter.

Sources said Haroon has a criminal past and a few cases pending against him in Nagaland. He was picked by Nagaland police earlier but let off.

The legislator, no stranger to controversies himself, said the conspiracy could be a fallout of factional rivalry.

A two-time MLA from South Karimganj, Ahmed won the seat in the 2001 Assembly elections on a Samata Party ticket. Once an aide to George Fernandez, Ahmed was elected again in 2006 as an Independent.

He was recently in the news for his running feud with Assam border areas minister and Barak valley’s political strongman Goutam Roy as part of a raging turf battle to gain political ascendancy in the district.

Ahmed claimed the killers had intended to set off a remote-controlled bomb at a public rally which he was supposed to have addressed in the district.

Rava today said over phone from the district headquarters town of Karimganj that he had already established contact with Nagaland police after the MLA’s disclosure.