Ulfa had no hand in NRL fire: Gogoi

GUWAHATI: A day after the Paresh Baruah-led faction of Ulfa claimed responsibility for the fire at Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Sunday dismissed the militant outfit's claim of triggering the bast at the refinery's Hydro Cracker Unit. In an email sent to media houses, Ulfa's publicity wing chief Joy Asom on Saturday said that they had started the blaze by using a magnetic time device to trigger the explosion.
Gogoi said the Ulfa faction had made similar false claims earlier as well. "The fire at the refinery was not caused by Ulfa. They have claimed responsibility for earlier incidents and they were not true," said Gogoi, citing examples of fires at Duliajan and Noonmati refineries for which the outfit had claimed responsibility, but were proved to be results of technical failures by subsequent investigations.
NRL has, meanwhile, constituted a high-level team to investigate the cause of the fire and confirmed that there were no casualties or injuries in the incident. In a press statement, NRL corporate communication manager Madhu Chandra Adhikari Chaudhury said: "A high-level committee has been formed to investigate the incident and the report will be released shortly."
Chaudhury added: "The fire was brought under control within an hour and was completely extinguished by 8:56 pm and an all-clear was issued at 9:25 PM. The fire did not spread to nearby units and was contained within that particular equipment by NRL's disaster mitigation mechanism. Support from other oil industries of the region including IOC, Guwahati, Digboi, ONGC, Nazira, OIL was sought under the mutual aid scheme."