‘Secret killings’: Gauhati HC upholds clean chit to Mahanta
The secret killings of the family members of ULFA militants took place from 1998 to 2001 during Mahanta’s second term as the chief minister.
GUWAHATI: The Gauhati High Court has upheld the judgement passed by a single-judge bench of the same court in 2018 that gave a clean chit to former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta in the infamous “secret killings” case.
Former journalist Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, who is now a Rajya Sabha member, and another individual Ananta Kalita had filed an instant interlocutory application challenging the 2018 judgement.
The court, however, said the charges made against the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) stalwart were part of a conspiracy by political parties and others to tarnish his image.
Mahanta, who is a two-time former CM, hailed the judgement.
“I thank the judiciary for this judgement. I had full faith and confidence in it,” he said.
The secret killings of the family members of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militants took place from 1998 to 2001 during Mahanta’s second term as the chief minister.
In 2005, the then Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s Congress government set up the KN Saikia Commission to probe the killings. In its report submitted in 2007, the commission had indicted Mahanta after finding evidence of a nexus between the police and surrendered ULFA militants, allegedly used as the executioners.
The High Court, however, had in 2018 quashed the constitution of the commission, calling it illegal.
Political parties, particularly Congress, attacked Mahanta, who is the AGP’s founder-president, for two decades for these extra-judicial killings.
Family members, relatives, friends and sympathisers of ULFA rebels were systematically killed by masked assailants. These killings, which stopped with the fall of the AGP government in 2001, were probably the darkest chapter in Assam’s political history. The Congress had fully capitalised on this issue to return to power in 2001.
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