ULFA-I chief Paresh Baruah questioned over ONGC man Ritul Saikia whereabouts

TINSUKIA: A fortnight after Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Ltd employee Ritul Saikia remained untraced after he was abducted by United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) along with two others from Lakwa, Asom Yuba Shakti Parishad, a youth organisation, has held the rebel outfit’s chief Paresh Baruah accountable for his whereabouts.

The organisation has put up hoardings and banners at different locations of Tinsukia district questioning the armed outfit for the whereabouts of Saikia.

In the hoardings and banners put up at Thana Chariali Old Railway Station here, Sijuguri, in front of Baruah’s ancestral residence at Jerai Gaon, Chabua Baligaon, Makum, in front of Doomdooma College and State Bank of India in Doomdooma, the organisation has questioned the ULFA-I about its accountability towards the abducted man’s whereabouts.

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“What is the status of ULFA-I’s revolution? Don’t you have any responsibility towards Ritul Saikia? Where is Ritul Saikia? Why is this enmity towards indigenous Assamese sons of the soil?” read the banners at different locations.

Security forces have claimed to have rescued two others -- Alakesh Saikia and Mohini Mohan Gogoi – who were abducted along with Ritul Saikia, from a remote village in Mon district of Nagaland on April 24. The three were abducted from a rig site at Lakwa on April 21.

After the two were rescued, the ULFA-I had issued a statement claiming that its cadres had handed over all the three abductees to the villagers before fleeing from the village following a gun battle with the security forces.

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The ULFA-I had also expressed apprehensions that the security forces could have hidden the 33-year-old junior technical assistant Ritul Saikia or he could have by shot dead by the forces in order to tarnish the image of ULFA-I.

The Mon district administration had dismissed the allegation though.

The ULFA-I had earlier last month released two employees of Quippo Oil and Gas Infrastructure Ltd – Pranab Kr Gogoi and ram Kumar – who were abducted from an oilfield of Oil India Ltd in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The release followed undisclosed negotiation with the oil company.