In Bhutan training camps, key ULFA functionary aided Maoists’ merger
The revelation is indicative of the close ties that prevailed between the Northeast insurgent groups, mainly the ULFA, and the dreaded Maoist groups that ruled supreme in the forested north–south stretches across central India in their heydays
A recent book, 'Rebel Bastar: History, Maoism and the Search for Answers in India’s Heartland' by Shantanu Nandan Sharma, reveals that Asanta Bagh Phukan, an in-charge of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) training camps in Bhutan, was instrumental in facilitating the merger of various extreme-left insurgent groups into a unified outfit. This significant unification, which brought together CPI (ML) PW and Narayan Sanyal’s CPI (ML) Party Unity (PU) starting in 1998, surprisingly took place in the remote hills of Bhutan within ULFA-operated camps. The book cites former ULFA foreign secretary Sashadhar Chowdhury, who corroborated Phukan's involvement and confirmed ULFA's assistance in hosting leaders, procuring arms, and sending cadres to support these Maoist factions.
A recent book, 'Rebel Bastar: History, Maoism and the Search for Answers in India’s Heartland' by Shantanu Nandan Sharma, reveals that Asanta Bagh Phukan, an in-charge of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) training camps in Bhutan, was instrumental in facilitating the merger of various extreme-left insurgent groups into a unified outfit. This significant unification, which brought together CPI (ML) PW and Narayan Sanyal’s CPI (ML) Party Unity (PU) starting in 1998, surprisingly took place in the remote hills of Bhutan within ULFA-operated camps. The book cites former ULFA foreign secretary Sashadhar Chowdhury, who corroborated Phukan's involvement and confirmed ULFA's assistance in hosting leaders, procuring arms, and sending cadres to support these Maoist factions.
A recent book, 'Rebel Bastar: History, Maoism and the Search for Answers in India’s Heartland' by Shantanu Nandan Sharma, reveals that Asanta Bagh Phukan, an in-charge of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) training camps in Bhutan, was instrumental in facilitating the merger of various extreme-left insurgent groups into a unified outfit. This significant unification, which brought together CPI (ML) PW and Narayan Sanyal’s CPI (ML) Party Unity (PU) starting in 1998, surprisingly took place in the remote hills of Bhutan within ULFA-operated camps. The book cites former ULFA foreign secretary Sashadhar Chowdhury, who corroborated Phukan's involvement and confirmed ULFA's assistance in hosting leaders, procuring arms, and sending cadres to support these Maoist factions.
It has come to light that the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in-charge of the Bhutan training camps, Asanta Bagh Phukan, helped facilitate the merger of the various extreme-left insurgents into an umbrella outfit. Senior journalist Shantanu Nandan Sharma has brought out the fact in his recently launched book, ‘Rebel Bastar: History, Maoism and the Search for Answers in India’s Heartland’. Phukan, the then organising secretary and a ULFA central committee member, played the role of mediator, facilitating the merger of the three Naxal groups.
“This formidable merger process, which began in 1998 with the unification of CPI (ML) PW and Narayan Sanyal’s CPI (ML) Party Unity (PU), was orchestrated by an Assamese extremist named Asanta Bagh Phukan. Surprisingly, the negotiations did not unfold in Bihar or Bastar but in the tranquil, remote hills of Bhutan, within a camp operated by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA),” Sharma wrote.
Phukan’s name is listed among those missing after ‘Operation All Clear’, a military offensive launched by the Royal Bhutan Army and covertly supported by the Indian Army against militant camps in Bhutan in December 2003. His whereabouts remain a contested mystery.
Among other sources, the fact of Phukan’s proactive involvement in the Maoists’ merger process was corroborated to Sharma by the then ULFA foreign secretary, Sashadhar Chowdhury.
Sharma quotes Chowdhury as saying, “In 1997, Bagh Phukan was instrumental in hosting leaders from PU, MCCI, and CPI (ML) (People’s War) at our camps in Bhutan”.
“We also aided them in procuring arms and sent our cadres to their camps. I was then based in Dhaka and didn’t personally meet the leaders. I don’t know the nitty-gritty of the process.”
Top ULFA sources had in the past detailed to this correspondent how key Maoist leaders like Ganapathy and Kishenji had visited ULFA’s Bhutan camps in the early 2000s.
Much like the ULFA, which has been relegated to a few scores of fighters operating under the leadership of fugitive Paresh Baruah from jungled tracts in Myanmar, the Indian government declared the Maoists a defeated force in March 2026 after a widespread security offensive.