The three persons from Assam included one Aditya Bora, said to be a former ULFA militant who had been in Jharkhand and Orissa for the past six months or so, reportedly providing arms training to Maoist cadres there.
Bora, who hails from Rajgarh in Dibrugarh district, is also suspected to have been involved in an incident of arms snatching from security forces in the district in November last year.
“There are reports about some Assam groups having links with the Maoists and also about sending their boys to their camps in Jharkhand, Orissa and other states,” a senior Assam Police official said here.
Six persons arrested in Lakhimpur district in upper Assam on January 27 had mentioned the name of Bora and that he was in Jharkhand undergoing training in a Maoist camp.
The police visited Bora’s home a few days later and was trying to link him to an incident of arms snatching that took place in Tingkhong on November 4 last year.
In April last year, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had said the Maoists had forged links with the ULFA to set up a base in Assam.
Besides the ULFA, a couple of other armed groups of the state are under the scanner for their alleged links with the Maoists.
Intelligence reports had last year suggested that the Adivasi National Liberation Army, that works among tea labourers and other settlers of Chhotanagpur-Jharkhand origin in Assam, had sent some of its boys for arms training with the Maoists.
Two other Assam outfits — United Peoples Democratic Solidarity and the Dima Halam Daoga — too have Maoist links, reports said.
Noted RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, general secretary of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, had landed in a controversy last year after the Assam Police claimed he had Maoist links.
UNDER SCANNER
* ULFA
* Adivasi National Liberation Army
* United Peoples Democratic Solidarity
* Dima Halam Daoga
* RTI activist Akhil Gogoi