Barua in China!

ULFA's elusive military wing chief Paresh Barua, facing death penalty in the 2004 Chittagong arms haul cases, is encamped at Ruili, a Chinese town on the border with Myanmar, Indian intelligence says.

A senior Intelligence Bureau (IB) official said Barua's location could be traced when he broke his long 'radio silence' by speaking recently to his junior commander Jyotirmoy Bharali.

"In recent months, he has hardly called even his own commanders, let alone journalists and social activists close to ULFA in Assam, as he would do so often before. But he called Jyotirmoy to check on recovering an important bag," said a senior Intelligence official.

But he was unwilling to be identified.

But the ULFA military wing chief called Bharali to ask him to recover a bag containing a 'key' phone directory belonging to him alongwith some SIM cards he had used.

The bag had been carried away by ULFA commander Partha Gogoi who was planning to surrender to Indian security forces but was executed on Barua's orders before he could do so.

"Barua frantically called up Bharali asking him to recover the phone directory and the SIM cards. The money in the bag were not considered so important by him but he appeared frantic about the phone directory and the SIM cards. He was desperate they should not fall in Indian hands," the intelligence official said.

Bharali assured Barua that the bag had been recovered from Gogoi and was safely in an ULFA camp in northern Myanmar.

Indian signals intelligence has tightly monitored Barua's calls in recent years.

It seems the rebel leader who would once talk for hours to journalists and social activists in Assam who he was friendly with has hardly come on line in recent weeks.

But he was desperate to stop the desertions from his ranks -- so Partha Gogoi and at least seven ULFA deserters were executed in the last few weeks, when they tried to flee the group's jungle bases in Myanmar's Sagaing division.

Earlier Indian intelligence had tracked down Barua to Tenchong, a Myanmar town not far from Ruili.

It appears that the ULFA military wing chief keeps going to Ruili to meet a woman friend who might well be an undercover Chinese intelligence agent.

Barua's wife Bobby and his two sons however live in Bangladesh.

It is not clear whether they have been traced -- and if so, whether they have been interrogated by Bangladesh security agencies to track down Barua, now that he is convicted of serious crimes by a court in the country.

It is unlikely that Barua will come back to Bangladesh to appeal against the verdict on the 2004 arms cases, because he would face inevitable arrest, which would cripple his ever-dwindling rebel faction.

Barua's contacts in China appear deep because the weapons he was trying to bring through Chittagong in 2004 were produced by China's top ordnance company, Norinco.

Other northeast Indian rebel groups also have access to sources of Chinese weapons, as Naga insurgent leader Anthony Shimray seems to have confessed to Indian investigating agencies.

Indian diplomats say Delhi is unwilling to press Beijing too hard on Barua because he was not apparently getting any overt support from the Chinese.

It remains to be seen whether Dhaka will take up the Barua issue with Beijing now that the rebel leader is convicted of serious crimes in Bangladesh.