The Tata Tea/ULFA Story

In August 1997, the Bombay police arrested a woman along with her newborn baby and two bodyguards from the Santacruz airport as she was leaving for Delhi. The woman was Pranati Deka (Pranati), cultural secretary of the banned militant organization United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the wife of ULFA's finance secretary Chitrabon Hazarika. Prior to this incident, the Assam and Delhi police had been following Pranati for a few months.

The primary reason for the police's interest in Pranati was not her link with the ULFA. It was her association with India's leading tea company Tata Tea Ltd. (Tata Tea) that had led to her arrest......