Kanak Sen Deka, Editor and Publisher of Dainik Agradoot, has held Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and Health Minister Kamala Kalita responsible for the incident.

Giving details of the incident, Deka said that the Chief Minister had threatened him over phone few days back over the publication of a news item about Mahanta's alleged involvement in the multi-crore Letters of Credit (LOC) scandal.

``The incident of setting the truck carrying newspapers to Upper Assam must be a handiwork of Mahanta and his goons,'' Deka said, adding, that during the last few days, several packets of his newspapers were snatched from the agents in Nagaon and Chaygaon and burnt down.

In last night's incident, the miscreants, according to Deka, came in three vehicles. They had waylaid the truck, fired in the air and even assaulted the driver and a despatch-boy andalso told them (driver and despatch-boy) that such attacks would continue till the newspaper stopped writing against the Chief Minister.

``Earlier our newspaper bundles were set on fire and prevented from being distributed at Chaygaon, the constituency of Health Minister Kamala Kalita after we wrote about a scandal involving him,'' Deka alleged.

Interestingly, while Deka made these allegations at a press conference, there was no mention of anything about the alleged involvement of Chief Minister Mahanta or Health Minister Kalita in the FIR which he has lodged with the police at Dispur. Nor was there any such mention in a message faxed to the Union Home Minister by him today.

The truck set on fire by the miscreants incidentally belonged to Rajashree Publications, publishers of Ajir Batori and Northeast Observer, and it was carrying newspapers of both Rajashree Publications and Agradoot Publications to Upper Assam.