GUWAHATI, May 28 (IANS): Four members of the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), directly involved in the October 2008 serial explosions in Assam, have been arrested in separate raids by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths, officials said on Friday.
A CBI spokesperson said Rahul Brahma was arrested on Thursday from Zero town in Arunachal Pradesh where he was taking shelter with his wife and child for the past few days. Brahma is the one who allegedly drove a Maruti 800 car packed with explosives and parked the vehicle at a crowded business hub in Panbazar on Oct 30, 2008. The car bomb went off killing eight people and wounded up to 30 others.
A total of nine near simultaneous explosions rocked the State that day killing 100 people and wounding 500 more, all the blasts blamed on the NDFB.
In another raid, CBI officials held three NDFB bombers from Kokrajhar in western Assam - all of them directly linked to the explosion at Bongaigaon town.
The trio of B Onsai, Indra Brahma and Lukhra allegedly rode a motorcycle packed with explosives and parked it in front of a shop in a crowded street in Bongaigaon, about 200 km west of here. An alert shop owner informed the police about the unattended motorcycle - a bomb disposal squad towed the motorcycle for defusing, but for some technical reasons the bomb went off before it could be defused, injuring two policemen.
"All the four arrested are directly linked to the serial blasts and we consider it a major success and we hope to catch a few more soon," CBI Superintendent of Police NS Kharayat told IANS. "Vital clues were provided by NDFB chairman Ranjan Daimary during our nine-day interrogation," the CBI official said.
Daimary was handed over to Indian authorities on May 5 by Bangladesh and is now in the custody of Assam Police. Earlier, the NDFB terror mastermind was in CBI custody for nine days until Tuesday.
"Daimary has confessed to the crime of masterminding the serial explosions and said the explosives were procured locally from Assam and also from Bhutan," the CBI official said.
The CBI had already filed a chargesheet naming Daimary and 19 more NDFB militants for the serial blasts Oct 30 2008 in Assam.
