By IANS,
Guwahati : A major disaster was averted Monday with police recovering a powerful explosive fitted with a programmable time device meant for a terror strike in Assam’s main city of Guwahati.
A police spokesperson said the nearly one-and-a-half kilogram bomb was recovered from an undisclosed location early Monday.
“It was a PTED (Programmable Timed Explosive Device) containing RDX packed in a plastic container and was meant for explosion in Guwahati ahead of Independence Day,” senior police official Debojit Deuri said.
“For security reasons we would not like to divulge details from where we recovered the explosive as we have inputs of at least two more bombs in Guwahati.”
In another development, police in Dhemaji district in eastern Assam warned of a joint attack by the ULFA and the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) in the run up to Independence Day.
“We have definite information of the ULFA and the NDFB planning to stage serial explosions in the district ahead of Aug 15 with a seven member team engaged for the attack. We have already managed to neutralise five of them although the threat perception is still very much there,” Satyaraj Hazarika, police chief of Dhemaji, said.
On Aug 15 2004, ULFA triggered a landmine in a college parade ground killing at least 20 people, 12 of them students, and wounding close to 100 more.
The ULFA has been fighting for an independent homeland since 1979.
Rebels in insurgency-hit Assam, the largest among the seven northeastern states, have for years been boycotting the Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations to protest the central government’s rule over the vast region rich in oil, tea and timber.
The run-up to the events has always been violent, with ULFA striking vital installations including crude oil pipelines, trains, and road and rail bridges, besides targeting federal soldiers.