Guwahati: The Government has been unable to convince United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa to hold peace talks and has decided not to give safe passage to him.
Sources tell CNN-IBN Rajkhowa will not be given a face-saver and the government will portray in public that he was arrested.
IANS reports Rajkhowa, ULFA “deputy commander-in-chief” Raju Baruah and eight others, including family members, on Friday surrendered before the Indian authorities in Meghalaya after Rajkhowa's talks with the central government broke down.
Rajkhowa, his security guard Raja Bora and Raju Baruah were later arrested by Assam police.
Among those who surrendered in Dawki at the India-Bangladesh border are Rajkhowa, his wife Kaveri and two children, Baruah, his wife and one child, Bora, and the wife of ULFA foreign secretary Sasha Choudhury and their son.
The surrendered ULFA leaders and their family members were brought to Guwahati by a helicopter and lodged at the 4th Assam Police Battalion headquarters in the city.
The surrender took place at the Dawki border outpost of the Border Security Force (BSF) at around 6 a.m.
That the surrender was stage-managed was evident when Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi Thursday told a press conference in Guwahati that a "breakthrough" had been made and that the whereabouts of Rajkhowa would be known in "days or maybe hours".
Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday told Parliament that in the next few days there would be a political statement from the ULFA regarding talks.
Sasha Choudhury and ULFA's self-styled finance secretary Chitrabon Hazarika were last month handed over by Bangladesh police to the Indian authorities and then later shown as arrested while trying to enter India through the border along Tripura.
ULFA boss Baruah call talk offers a trap
Reflecting the differences among ULFA's top leadership, the group’s “commander-in-chief” Paresh Baruah on Friday asked Rajkhowa not to fall into the "trap" of Indian government by holding a dialogue.
"I appeal to you not to fall into the trap of Indian government, and declare your present stand keeping in mind the sacrifice of 12,000 martyrs who laid down their lives for an independent Assam as well as the people of Assam who crave for independence," he said in an e-mail statement to media organisations in Assam.
"The Indian government has 'hatched a dirty politics' in the name of initiating dialogue with the ULFA and we demand that the Indian government should desist from such an 'evil practice'," he said.
(With inputs from CNN-IBN Correspondents, IANS and PTI)
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