Kolkata: Fugitive Gorkha leader Bimal Gurung on Wednesday issued a statement denying the West Bengal government’s allegation that a huge cache of arms comprising self loading rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition was recovered from his hideout in a raid on 13 October.
The state administration cited the arms haul to tie Gurung, president of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), to separatist forces from the northeast and Maoist guerrillas. In his first statement since the raid on Friday, Gurung said it was a conspiracy to undermine the image of the GJM.
He said the arms shown to the media by the police—at least nine self loading rifles, ammunition and radio sets—did not belong to the GJM at all. They possibly belonged to another separatist group and were “planted by the police”, he claimed, while denying an encounter between his supporters and the police in which a sub-inspector was killed.
Gurung said he was not eyeing any administrative post in the separate state that he was fighting to carve out of West Bengal for the Gorkhas. He asked all Gorkha leaders to unite and launch a peaceful movement to demand a separate state, while slamming those who had given up on the idea of Gorkhaland.