By IANS,
Guwahati : The Assam police Saturday shot dead a dreaded militant of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) who was the prime suspect in the 1997 killing of noted social activist Sanjoy Ghosh here.
A police spokesman said ULFA militant Amrit Dutta was killed in a gun battle Saturday evening near Garamur village in Majuli, about 350 km east of Assam’s main city of Guwahati.
“Dutta was the prime suspect in the Sanjoy Ghosh kidnapping and murder case and naturally it is a major success for the security forces,” a senior police official said by telephone from Majuli.
Details of the gun battle were not immediately known.
Ghosh, general secretary of the Assam Voluntary Association for Rural Development (AVARD-NE), was abducted by ULFA militants July 4, 1997 from Majuli where his NGO was working for upliftment of the islanders. The militants later killed Ghosh, although his body was never recovered.
Sumita Ghosh, wife of Ghosh, had earlier said her husband was abducted and later killed as a “punishment” for exposing the “unholy nexus” that existed among the contractors, the ULFA leaders, and government officials in Majuli.
The kidnapping and the subsequent killing of Ghosh had then evoked international media attention with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) taking up the case.
The CBI had filed the chargesheet in the case and named Amrit Dutta as the prime accused in the kidnapping and murder of Ghosh.