Timeline Bhutan Year 2009

According to Sentinel, about 40 militants dressed in the fatigues of Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) of India ransacked a house in the Sarpang District of Bhutan. This is the second such incident in the area during the last three weeks. The militants, suspected to be of a Bodo group of Assam, were armed with AK-47 series rifles. Eight of the militants who entered the house carried AK-47 rifles and two others reportedly carried locally-made guns. "… the shadows cast by the SSB caps they wore made it difficult to make out their faces," the owner of the house Rajesh Pandal said. Rajesh Pandal and his wife were assaulted by the militants throughout the half-an-hour attack. The house of the victims is located about 40 metres from the Gelephu-Sarpang Highway, about 300 metres from the India-Bhutan border in the south. According to a press release from the Royal Bhutan Police, the armed men were supposedly members of the Bodo group from Assam.

June 19

After signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the visiting Indian External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna, the Bhutanese Foreign Minister Ugyen Tshering denied the presence of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in that country, according to Assam Tribune. "We don’t have any presence of any ULFA cadre here…," Tshering said. There were intelligence reports that some ULFA cadres were still witnessed along the India-Bhutan border resulting in some violent attacks by the insurgent group in those areas, according to the report.

Bhutan dismissed reports of the presence of permanent camps of Indian militant outfits on its territory but said it cannot rule out occasional incursions by the militants in the country. "There are unconfirmed reports of ULFA training camps along the India-Bhutan border but not within Bhutan," said Joint Secretary of Law and Order Bureau Karma T Namgyal, who was part of the Bhutanese delegation that held parleys with an Indian team at the Seventh Border Coordination Development Meeting in capital Thimphu.

Indian officials said the ULFA and NDFB militants, based in Assam, are regrouping and may try to enter Bhutan to set up camps. "We were told that these groups are regrouping and planning to come back. We need to be more vigilant," an unnamed official said. According to Indian officials, these groups are in close collaboration with anti-national groups like Communist Party of Bhutan (MLM), Bhutan Tiger Force (BTF) and Revolutionary Youth of Bhutan (RYOB). "We've also received information that Maoist groups like MLM, BTF and RYOB are receiving trainings from ULFA and NDFB militants in batches," Namgyal was quoted as saying by the state-run newspaper Kuensel.

August 24

Bhutan has reportedly said that no militant outfit from Assam had camps on its soil, according to Telegraph. A 11-member delegation from Bhutan which is visiting Assam said in Kokrajhar that their country would never allow any anti-India activity from its soil. "We are clear that after Operation All Clear in 2003, there is no militant camp in our country," Dasho Kunzang Wangai, the Deputy Commissioner of Bhutan’s Serfang District, bordering Kokrajhar in Assam, said. He also said his Government had asked him to convey to India that Bhutan would never allow any insurgent group from India to use Bhutan for its activities. Earlier, Wangai, the Superintendent of Police of Gelephu, Major Karma Tshering and Gelephu Sub-Divisional Officer Yecherangrig Dorji met the Kokrajhar Deputy Commissioner of Police Carol Narzary and top officials of the para-military Sashastra Seema Bal to discuss security of the two countries.