The wife of a missing Ulfa militant during the hungerstrike

Guwahati, May 31: Barely a month after reluctantly calling off their fast-unto-death, the wives of missing Ulfa militants put the government back on notice today for failing to provide information about their husbands.

Their counsel, Bijan Mahajan, requested Gauhati High Court to ask the government to submit another list of Ulfa members who were arrested by the army while trying to sneak out of Bhutan during the military flushout operation in that country in 2003.

Mahajan argued that the government had deployed the army along the Indo-Bhutan border during the operation to prevent Ulfa members from re-entering India and arrested quite a few of them. He said it was imperative for the government to reveal the names of the militants arrested by the army during that period.

The Tarun Gogoi ministry had previously given the court a list of Ulfa members handed over to India by the Royal Bhutan Army.

Shyamalee Gogoi, wife of one of the missing Ulfa militants, filed a habeas corpus petition in 2005, seeking to know the whereabouts of her husband Punaram Dihingia, alias Prakash Gogoi. The petition mentioned that Shyamalee and her husband were taken captive by the Bhutan army along with senior Ulfa leaders Benning Rabha, Robin Neog and Ashanta Baghphukan on December 18, 2003. They were turned over to the Indian army on December 24 that year. Shyamalee was freed later.

Her petition will come up for hearing again on June 14.

Ulfa, which had been banking on the fast-unto-death by the wives of missing militants to trigger a wave of sympathy, issued a statement later in the day against those who have been taking out processions to mobilise opinion against it. The militant group said organisations and individuals who were asking people to “chase away Ulfa” would never be able to sabotage the mission to “liberate Assam from the colonial powers”.

Guwahati has been witnessing anti-Ulfa processions by senior citizens, journalists and others.

Ulfa “commander-in-chief” Paresh Barua branded the protesters “agents of the Indian government”.