Mamoni Raisom

Guwahati, July 2: The death of P.C. Ram at the hands of his Ulfa captors has left writer Mamoni Raisom Goswami nursing the guilt of not being able to answer his family’s cry for help.

She revealed to The Telegraph today that the slain FCI executive director’s son, Pravin, had telephoned her several times with a request to put in a word with the Ulfa leadership.

“But my hands were tied…I did not know how to contact the leadership,” said Goswami, on whom the government has vested the responsibility of meeting Ulfa leaders in hiding to broker peace talks.

The writer said Ram’s death was a “personal failure” and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.

Police dug out Ram’s body from a pit in Baksa district’s Anandapur village on Saturday. Post-mortem revealed that he was killed at least five days earlier. The militants slit his throat and stabbed him in the back.

Goswami said Ulfa commander-in-chief Paresh Barua, who is the one who contacts her when the need arises, did not call her even once since Pravin made the request to help secure his father’s freedom. She gave the MBA student the telephone number of a member of the Ulfa-constituted People’s Consultative Group to ask whether he could help, but the response was not encouraging.

“After calling him once, Pravin did not pursue the matter,” the writer said.

Ram’s son called her instead on a few more occasions to check whether anybody from Ulfa had spoken to her in the interregnum.

“I told him I would take it up with Ulfa if Paresh calls me. I do not know whether it would have been of any help. But had he (the Ulfa leader) called, I could have pleaded with him to let Ram go,” she said.

On whether she had anything to say to Ulfa now, Goswami said she was “shocked” by the militant group’s “unnecessary” act. “It was too bad, particularly the cruel manner in which he was killed.”

Goswami had been planning to make a formal request to Ulfa on behalf of the Nagarik Shanti Manch to give its consent for talks in writing, as demanded by Delhi.

The government insisted on such a letter from Ulfa when a delegation of the manch called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and national security adviser M.K. Narayanan recently.

On the other hand, Ulfa said in the latest issue of its mouthpiece, Freedom, that feelers for talks should come through the PCG.