WITH SILIGURI, in North Bengal becoming a hot bed of terrorist activities, panic has gripped residents of the sub-divisional town. On Wednesday (April 17) the police surrounded a house in Mahakalpalli to search for explosives after a house owner informed the local municipal councillor that a photograph of a woman suspect circulated by the police happened to be his tenant. Improvised explosive devices have been found in at least three houses that the police raided over the last two weeks. In one, in Champasari, an explosion killed three people including a woman when they were tinkering with the explosives early this month.

 

The police had circulated through the media the photograph of Krishna Tamang, a Nepali girl who lived with at least two others in a house rented out in Mahakalpalli in Siliguri. All three have disappeared. Police surrounded the house today and summoned the bomb squad. The police had earlier circulated a picture of the woman they assume was the one who died in the explosion in April 3 in Siliguri. Her face was so badly mutilated that it became difficult to establish whether she was the woman in the picture. This woman’s picture was found during raids in Mallaguri and Gurung Bustee in the town following the blast in Champasari.

 

Following the massive explosion in Champasari, in which the three persons including a woman were killed, the police have been using microphones and distributing leaflets asking house owners to submit to police stations details of their tenants. The move led to tracking down two youths who had stored 2.5 kilograms of explosives in another rented house in Mallaguri. The group that was killed and the two were said to be linked. In the last two weeks police found explosives from three houses and also came to know that a number of Nepali girls were staying in Siliguri and working in nursing homes as nurses as a front and carrying on with subversive activities with their male counterparts.

 

A house owner saw the picture of Krishna Tamang circulated by the police and got in touch with the local municipal councilor, who in turn informed the police. Two other women, Binu and Kalpana, (both assumed names) who stayed with Krishna also disappeared. Preliminary investigations have revealed that the youth operating from Siliguri could be members of the Maoist Youth Federation of Nepal. But the investigators are not certain whether they are still with the organisation or were working for some other agencies like Pakistan’s ISI for instance. The men and women were said to be staying at the Beldangi camp in Nepal at one stage. The police are yet to identify, which organisation the youths were working for but they are certain that they were acting as carriers of the explosives found. So far none of the youths has been identified as a top leader. The intelligence agencies and the police are also trying to establish whether any of the activities of the youth were linked to the movement demanding a separate state of Gorkhaland.