Pranjal Deka alias Biju Saraniya, one of the three ULFA militants who had planted at least one of the three bombs that rocked Guwahati on Januray 1, was killed in an encounter with security forces near Rangiya in Kamrup district on Thursday.

Assam’s Director General of Police G M Srivastava said that while Deka was killed in the encounter, another ULFA militant managed to escape under cover of darkness. “The encounter took place late this afternoon,” Srivastava said.

The police was after Deka, aged about 20 years, from December 31 when the Union Home Ministry had shared information with the State government that a group of ULFA militants were in Guwahati to cause some trouble around New Year’s Day.

“It was a joint operation of troops of the 4 Sikh LI and the Assam Police, during which Pranjal Deka was killed inside a house where they (the militants) had taken shelter,” Maj Gen Chander Prakash, GOC, 21 Division of the Army, based at Rangiya told The Indian Express over the telephone. He said while the operations to track the militants down began around 5pm, the jawans zeroed in on a house where two of them were hiding. While Deka was killed, the other managed to escape.

Deka, an ULFA cadre who hailed from village Dwarkuchi in Baska district bordering Bhutan, had called up the police from a mobile phone and warned that there would be a series of blasts on December 31 or January 1. The police warned him that he was being tracked and that he would be killed if he did not drop the bomb he was carrying in a secluded spot. A scared Deka subsequently left the bomb in a garbage bin at Birubari, which went off at 2:35 pm on January 1. The Guwahati City Police obtained his photograph from Reliance mobile records and released it to the media. While Deka managed to slip out of Guwahati, the police arrested about a dozen persons in the past week, which included Sanjib Talukdar who confessed to having planted one of the three bombs at Bhutnath in Guwahati. Police, however, are yet to pin down Khagen Kalita, a self-styled Sergeant Major of ULFA, who is said to have masterminded the January 1 blasts.