Special Services Bureau personnel take up positions at Totopara on the Indo-Bhutan border. Picture by Biplab Basak

Siliguri, Dec. 15: The sudden raid has caught the guerrillas napping.

Under pressure from their now “unfriendly hosts” the United Liberation Front of Asom, National Democratic Front of Boroland and the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation had been shifting their bases from the dense Fifshu jungles in south Bhutan over the past few weeks. What the Ulfa-NDFB-KLO combine “miscalculated” was that the Bhutan authorities, under pressure from India, would dare carry out a military operation.

In the last 12 months, senior Bhutanese officials, including King Jigme Singye Wangchuk, had visited the militant hideouts and met the top brass of the Ulfa-NDFB to “persuade” them to leave the kingdom. The king informed the Bhutan national assembly in July that a “military action” against the Indian insurgent groups taking shelter in the country was the “last option”.

“Members of the national assembly had voiced their fears about a possible militant backlash. They cited an incident of December 2000 when a passenger bus coming from Bhutan was attacked in Assam’s Nalbari district. Fifteen Bhutanese subjects were gunned down and 19 wounded by the militants from the NDFB,” a senior Bhutan home ministry official said.

Bhutanese people travelling from Phuentsholing to Pema Gatsel, Samdrup Jongkhar or Tashigang have to go through north Bengal and Nalbari in Assam. The outfits had been taking advantage of the Bhutanese concern for the safety of its nationals and the fact that the Royal Bhutanese Army was “inexperienced” in tackling insurgency.

A senior Indian military intelligence officer said his men on the ground had been keeping a close tab on the activities and movement of the Ulfa-NDFB-KLO combine, but they took care to ensure that the militants did not get “even a whiff” of the impending military operation to be launched by the RBA with tactical support of the Indian Army.

“We followed the developments in Bhutan closely and provided intelligence inputs to the RBA on the movements. The militants, though aware of a possible joint operation by Indian and Bhutan, had started to look for two options. First, set up new transit camps from where the militants would be able to shift men and material and also to find safe houses for storing their arsenal. Second, the militants were busy exploring new routes to shift bases in Bangladesh and Nepal. Their activities were being closely monitored but we deliberately turned a blind eye so as not to raise any suspicion of the impending military operation,” said the officer.

An NDFB spokesman told The Telegraph over phone from an undisclosed location that three of their bases at Sarpang and Samdrup Jongkhar districts had come under attack from the Royal Bhutanese Army since early on Monday. He said the NDFB men, who are fighting for an independent homeland for the Bodo tribe, retreated from one of the camps but beat back the Bhutanese troops from the other two. He was not able to provide details of casualties.

Jalpaiguri district administration officials said they had received information about the operation and deployed police personnel in the area to take care of the civilians. “We are aware of such operations. Police personnel have been deployed to take care of the residents,” said district magistrate A. Subbaiya.