The police have arrested a 21-year-old student from Lower Assam’s Udalgiri district for allegedly supporting the proscribed Ulfa (independent) in a Facebook post.
Pramod Kalita, a fourth semester student in the arts stream from Tangla College, was arrested from his Borengabari residence on Sunday morning based on a complaint lodged by an assistant sub-inspector and was forwarded to judicial custody by afternoon on the same day, the police revealed on Monday.
Kalita is the second student to have been arrested by the police since May for allegedly professing support to the banned organisation.
He has been booked under IPC Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging, or attempting to wage war against India), 121A (conspiring to commit certain offences against the State) and Section 39 of the anti-terror law Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) by the Kalaigaon police in the Udalgiri district.
“We arrested him for supporting a banned organisation. In his Facebook comments, he said he was ‘ready to give his life for the ulfa’, that he ‘always support’ the Ulfa ... he even hailed the Ulfa. When a Facebook user said he should be immediately arrested, the student responded by daring one to arrest him, that he is a student and that he loves the Ulfa,” a police official told The Telegraph.
In the second post, the student also said he was not a member of the outfit which was banned in 1990.
Kalita’s father is a farmer.
The police official also said one should desist from issuing such statements in support of a banned organisation, adding Kalita has no past record of any arrest or police complaint against him.
The two arrests suggest the police were keeping a close watch on social media posts related to the banned outfit following reports about 200 youths joining the outfit at a time when it was in unilateral ceasefire.
On May 18, the Uriamghat police in Upper Assam’s Golaghat district arrested Barshashree Buragohain, a mathematics student of the DCB Girls College in Jorhat, under Sections 10 and 13 of the anti-terror law UAPA.
Like Kalita, the police had lodged a suo motu case against Barshashree.
Monday also saw Assam Trinamul unit’s women wing stage a dharna in Guwahati seeking the release of Barshashree, at present lodged in Golaghat district jail where she is appearing for her second semester examinations. The Gauhati High Court will hear her bail plea on July 21.
Barshashree, 19, has been accused of posting a message that “seems” to “encourage the public” to support the activities of the Ulfa (I), according to a note the police submitted to the court of a sub-divisional judicial magistrate.
The police took suo motu cognisance of her Facebook post in Assamese, whose English translation would read: “A step more towards the sun of independence, we will once again resort to treason.” Although her post did not mention the Ulfa (I), the rising sun is prominently displayed on the flag of the armed outfit.
The Assam Pradesh Trinamul Mahila Congress president Papari Malakar said their members staged the dharna at their city headquarters seeking her immediate release considering her young age.
The women members displayed placards and raised slogans not to suppress democratic rights of citizens and writing a poem should not treated as treason, among others.
“She may have got emotional and written something.… We need to look at these factors. In the past also people have written or said such things. We demand that she be released at the earliest,” Malakar said.
