Daily Times

NEW DELHI – India’s militant outfit – United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) – has threatened to blow up Bangladesh’s largest gas transmission pipeline, Indian media reported on Wednesday.

The Paresh Barua-led group of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) recently issued the threat to blow up the transmission line of the Bibiyana gas field, which supplies 45 per cent of the gas, the Samakal newspaper reported in a lead story, basing it on information given by Indian intelligence agencies.

The article said the Indian intelligence agencies recently unearthed the plot tapping a telephone conversation of Barua with an ULFA commander when he asked him to blow up the pipeline in Bangladesh. The 119-kilometre long Bibiyana pipeline is Bangladesh’s largest transmission line that supplies gas to the national grid from the gas field in north-eastern Habiganj, bordering Assam to central Dhunat sub-district, operated by US oil giant Chevron.

Officials of the state-run Petrobangla, which contracts out gas plants to foreign and local oil companies, said they received the information last week and took up the issue with government authorities concerned and cautioned Chevron. “We have sought necessary government steps for the security of the gas line and cautioned Chevron to enforce an extra vigil on the production and transmission systems,” the Press Trust of India news service quoted Petrobangla director M Kamaruzzaman as saying.

He said that Petrobangla and Chevron already held a meeting with the officials of India’s Home Ministry and security agencies concerned to ensure adequate security for the plant and the transmission line. A Home Ministry official said that the law enforcement and the security agencies were asked to take necessary steps in view of the reported threat, enhancing their vigil as the outfit has record of carrying out sabotages on Indian gas pipelines.

However, officials said that they were assessing its authenticity and capacity of the outfit’s remnants. Home Minister Asaduzzaman Kamal expressed his doubt about the authenticity of the threat and capacity of the ULFA militants as most of their top leaders gave up their separatist campaign in view of their negotiations with the Indian government.

In November last year, Bangladesh extradited ULFA leader Anup Chetia to India as he himself wanted to be repatriated after being lodged in Bangladeshi jails for over 18 years since his 1997 arrest on intrusion charges. Several other ULFA bigwigs were reportedly arrested in Bangladesh and subsequently were handed over to India in recent years. Dhaka, however, never confirmed these incidents officially.