The anti-talk faction of the Ulfa led by its elusive commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah has logged on to YouTube to pay tribute to a woman cadre of the outfit, who had joined the outfit about a year back and died recently under mysterious circumstances.
This came to focus after the outfit emailed to media a link of a video, uploaded on www.youtube.com -a popular public communication site, to pay tribute to Jahnabi Mahanta Rajkonwar, a teacher turned rebel, who died under mysterious circumstances in the militants’ camps recently.
The video, titled-’Rashmita’ Asom will miss you-comprises some photographs of Jahnabi Mahanta Rajkonwar (who changed her name to Rashmita Asom after joining Ulfa) shot in different locations, believed to be in the outfit’s camp. There is also an Assamese song being played on the backdrop while the 4.25 minutes video is on to pay tribute to Rashmita. There are also some photographs of Jahnabi being shot while holding guns and sitting with some top brass of the outfit in their camps.
Jahnabi, a teacher with a Government school in Naharkatia in Upper Assam’s Dibrugarh district had left her family-two sons and husband-and job to join the outfit on February 13 last year. She left a letter for her husband saying that her decision of joining the outfit was neither sudden nor an emotional decision but a well thought plan.
Jahnabi is also known in Assam’s literary circuit as a short story writer.
However, the outfit has a few days back informed to media that Jahnabi, alias Rashmita, died during an accident earlier this year. The outfit had also termed her as a martyr.
Senior police officials in Assam, however, termed the move of the outfit as a mere publicity stunt and said that they have also been trying to ‘glorify’ the organisation particularly when several senior leaders of the outfit had recently joined the pro-talks groups.