One of the 'most wanted' north-east terrorist leader, the 45-yr-old ULFA ‘commander-in-chief’ Paresh Barua is a versatile radical who has been successful in evading Indian forces for long despite non-stop efforts by the latter.
Wanted for a series of robberies, killings and extortions, he is believed to be currently based in Bangladesh or Bhutan. Trained in guerrilla war by ISI, Kachin Independent Army (KIA) of Myanmar and NSCN, he can handle all kinds of weapons, travels on forged passports and identity cards and lives on money obtained from extortion or robbery.
"Also known as Paban Barua, Pradip Barua and Nur-Uz-ZamanHe, he is 173 cms in height, has black hair and black eyes, a scar on the palm of his right hand..." so goes on and on the description about him in Assam police records which particularly hightlight a May 10, 1985 incident in which he and some others raided a bank in Guwahati, shot the manager and 'stole' a sum of Rs 27,549.62 in cash.
Often dubbed as 'braveheart' by many ULFA sympathisers, he has had brush with death several times, including in Dec 2000 when he was seriously wounded in a factional gun-battle in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh.
{{/usCountry}}Often dubbed as 'braveheart' by many ULFA sympathisers, he has had brush with death several times, including in Dec 2000 when he was seriously wounded in a factional gun-battle in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh.
{{/usCountry}}But there is other side of Barua story too. Born on May 1, 1957, he is a very good football player, can speak a number of languages including English, Bengali, Hindi, Naga and Singpho and of course Assamese, his mother tongue.
Hailing from a village (Jerai Chakalibhariya under Chabua police station) where almost every family has seen at least one boy making it to the state football team, he used to be a darling of the crowds at Chabua, his hometown, as the unputdownable centre-forward of the local football team. That was in the early 1970s, a period when just out of school with a first division in the school finals, Paresh also found a place in the Assam junior football team.
He had even got a job in the Northeast Frontier Railway at Tinsukia for his prowess in the game of football, and also played for the local railway team.
Will Indian forces ever catch him. Only times has the answer.