TURA, April 9 — The huge cache of arms seized by the West Garo Hills Police on Tuesday evening after an encounter with militants was meant for the banned ULFA. The outfit had planned to transport the armoury from Garo Hills to Assam to attack security forces and disrupt normal life during its raising day, which passed of Monday. Documents seized from the encounter site reveal these facts. The arms shipment was brought all the way through Bangladesh and concealed in Chisikgre village of West Garo Hills, bordering Assam, since the last two weeks, highly places sources revealed.
A team of ULFA cadres were positioned in the village to safeguard the shipment with tacit support of some locals. It is believed that the banned ANVC, Garo Hills-based militants group, may have helped the ULFA in concealing the weapons. The sudden ‘friendship’ between the ANVC and the ULFA is seen as filling the vaccum left by the NDFB which has been asked by the Garo outfit to vacate Garo Hills.
In the largest seize of weapons and explosives ever by the police in the history of Meghalaya, the West Garo Hills police recovered 96 Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), a large amount of RDX, arms and ammunition, and shot dead one militant in the encounter which took place at Chisikgre village, under Phulbari Police Station, on Tuesday afternoon.
Acting on a tip-off, the West Garo Hills police along with the Special Operations Team (SOT) and the CRPF raided Chisikgre village, north of Rongdupara village, at around 3.30 pm and came across five militants holed up in the area. An encounter lasting for over twenty minutes took place between the militants and the police. In the fire-fight police shot dead one militant identified as Jasin Marak. Two other militants believed to be Boros received bullet injuries but managed to escape. The police recovered 96 RPGs, one AK-56 rifle, one Chinese grenade, two AK magazines with twenty rounds of live ammunition, one high-frequency wireless set, 300 grams of plastic explosive (RDX), and photographs and registers were also recovered from the site of the encounter. Having noticed the attempt of the militants to conceal the RPGs a thorough search has been launched throughout the area to find more of these highly explosive bombs. Meanwhile, Meghalaya Home Minister, RG Lyngdoh is touring the three districts of Garo Hills. Lyngdoh arrived at Phulbari on the day of the arms recovery. He held a high level meeting of the top brass of the police in the Garo Hills on Wednesday morning at Tura followed by a citizens meet at Tura circuit House. Lyngdoh, accompanied by the Additional Director General of Meghalaya Police, WR Marbaniang will also visit Baghmara and Williamnagar.