NIA Raids Jagdish Patgiri's Guwahati Home For Sheltering ULFA-I Cadre

Former Asom Sahitya Sabha secretary Dr Jagdish Patgiri was on Wednesday taken by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for allegedly sheltering Jahnu Baruah alias Arnab Asom, who was behind planting explosives across Guwahati on Independence Day, this year.

However, Dr Patgiri’s wife claimed innocence, stating that they had known Jahnu Baruah for years as he lived nearby. She said, “He took a room with us on rent in August. We knew him from before. He had been staying in the same lane as us for many years. As he faced some issues with his previous room, he came to stay with us. Although we took his documents, we did not submit them to the police as we had known him for so long. He lived along with his wife here. During puja, he had gone to his hometown.”

The NIA team led an operation in Guwahati’s Hengrabari locality at the residence of Dr Patgiri, where Baruah, an ULFA-I cadre had been staying. He has been accused of planting bombs at Pan Bazar, Dispur, Gandhi Mandap and Satgaon on Independence Day. The plan, however, did not go through as some “technical glitches” prevented the explosions, the militant group claimed in a letter afterwards.

Meanwhile, Dr Patgiri accepted his mistake in not submitting Jahnu Baruah’s documents to the police as per norms, lamenting that he was fooled and did not expect this to happen. He said, “I was delivering a speech at Satgaon Sahitya Sabha when my wife called and told me that a team from NIA had come to our home. On May 10, we gave a room to Jahnu Baruah on rent while taking due diligence in collecting his documents. He was living with his wife, their child, and his sister-in-law. He worked as a Rapido rider. I came to know that he had gone to his hometown before Puja. After they went, his sister-in-law came to stay here. We did not receive a month’s rent and when we asked for it, the sister-in-law told us that her mother suffered a heart attack.”

“On December 16, CID came to our home, but I was absent. I reached home late and talked to officials when I came to know that they had seized two mobile phones from his room. One was Jahnu’s and the other was his sister-in-law’s. We do not let anyone commit a crime knowingly. We are willing to extend all our cooperation whenever the police want us to. We took his Aadhaar card, however, we accept that we did not submit his documents to the police. We are not aware of who came to his room. Even if people came, we did not think anything adverse would come from it. I could never imagine that he played me,” Dr Patgiri added.

Notably, the NIA had arrested Jahnu Baruah earlier this month. Officials recovered incriminating materials, including digital devices during raids at his place. In the preliminary questioning, Baruah confessed to planting four of the 11 IEDs recovered by state police on Independence Day.

The IEDs were strategically placed at high-profile locations across Guwahati. These bombings were part of ULFA-I’s broader military protest and call to boycott the I-Day celebrations, as issued by Paresh Baruah, the outfit's SS C-in-C, in a video. The video had warned of severe consequences for any defiance of their orders.