‘Baba’ of Naga insurgency dies at 76

New Delhi/ Guwahati: Commonly known as “Baba”, one of the most influential and dreaded of Naga militants, Shangwang Shangyung Khaplang, chief of the newly-formed United Liberation Front of Western South East Asia (UNLFW) and the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang faction), passed away at 7.45pm (Myanmar time) on Friday at the age of 76, top sources have confirmed to this newspaper.

A diabetic, he was not keeping well for a few years.

The brain behind quite a few hit-and-run attacks on Indian security forces in recent times, Khaplang’s word was law in a virtually ungoverned and inaccessible 60,000 sq km tract in western Myanmar skirting Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur.

Born in 1941 in a village near the Pangsau Pass in Myanmar, the Naga leader was one of the leading faces of the insurgency movements in Northeast.

Condoling his death, Arabinda Rajkhowa, Ulfa-Rajkhowa faction chairman, told this newspaper: “Baba was the first person to received the first ULFA team near the Patkai mountains. From 1986 to 1994, I have stayed together with ‘Baba’ in the thick jungles.”