GUWAHATI: Assam’s Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said a “deadliest” attack was planned to destroy Guwahati during the recent violence surrounding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 with leading intellectual hatching the design.
Without taking any name, Sarma said the intellectual had hatched a conspiracy to burn the Assam Secretariat even as he (Sarma) displayed a photo, purportedly that of the state’s Youth Congress president Kamrul Islam at a site of arson.
“We have seen a design in the violence and I am speaking from evidence. A deadliest attack was planned to destroy Guwahati. The Congress had asked people to come near the Janata Bhawan (Assam Secretariat). Somewhere else, a leading academician, who is an intellectual, had passed instructions that the Janata Bhawan should be attacked and burnt down. He is an unseen intellectual who worked in a Central government organisation. He was monitoring the entire exercise that day,” Sarma told journalists in Guwahati on Tuesday.
Playing a video footage, which the minister claimed was from a site of arson, he showed a man shaking hand with another and claimed the person was the Assam Youth Congress president.
“He could be a look-alike. We have to go to the forensic department for confirmation but I feel he is the Assam Youth Congress president. Why did he have to shake hand?” the minister asked.
He said the state government was collecting videos showing the involvement of members of an organisation, PFI. We will disclose their names in two to three days. He also displayed some photos of people at different purported sites of arson in Guwahati and claimed the government has the videos. The minister said of the 107 people arrested in Guwahati, 48 were from Lower Assam.
Meanwhile, the state government has constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the incidents of violence. Sarma said the state government would request the Centre to depute a CBI or NIA official to the SIT for six months.