Guwahati: A peace broker between the Centre and banned outfit ULFA was arrested on Monday in connection with an alleged plot to hijack an Indian Airlines aircraft from Lokopriyo Gopinath International Airport in Guwahati and take it to Pakistan.
The police have also detained an employee of Air Deccan for questioning in connection with the hijacking conspiracy.
Meanwhile, People's Consultative Group member Lachit Bordoloi was also arrested in Upper Assam after his name had come up during interrogation of a ULFA militant, who had been arrested on Sunday. Bordoloi once represented the ULFA in negotiation with the Centre.
A police team had raided Bordoloi's house on Sunday, but did not find him at home. He was arrested in a place called Moran, seven hours from Guwahati. He will be brought to Guwahati on Monday night.
The police had claimed a major breakthrough on Sunday after unearthing the hijack plan with the arrest of three suspects, which included an advocate, a journalist and a militant.
Assam IGP (Special Branch) Khagen Sharma claimed the outfit had planned to hijack an Air India plane to Thimpu from Guwahati Airport.
The ULFA cadre's leader, Manoj Tamuly, who was arrested in Guwahati on Saturday night along with one pistol and four rounds of ammunition, allegedly named prominent advocate Nekibur Zaman, human rights activist Bordoloi and television journalist Pradeep Gogoi. All the three have been arrested within the last 36 hours.
The IGP claimed the militant had received the hijacking training in the jungles of Baska district of Assam, adjacent to Bhutan border. The training was imparted by one Rasik Ahmed, believed to be an ISI operative, Sharma claims.
Tamuly had confessed before media that the plan was to hijack the plane to Thimpu and from there, a new set of ULFA men would take the aircraft to Rawalpindi.
ULFA, however, denied this and claimed this was a disinformation campaign to scuttle the political process in Assam.
"We have no such plan. There was no training for this purpose. This campaigning had been going on for quite some time and it was just an attempt to block the political process," ULFA publicity in-charge Rubi Bhuyan said in an e-mailed statement.
Sources say that based on the statement by Tamuly, the Air Deccan employee Sumon Dutta is likely to be arrested soon.
In the past, there have been inputs from CISF, which raised suspicions about Dutta, they said.
(With agency inputs)
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