Silchar, May 3: Army and police teams today fanned out into the jungles along Cachar district’s border with Meghalaya to look for members of a fledgling militant group that yesterday ambushed a Gorkha Rifles patrol party near Damcherra railway station. A member of the Pnar Liberation Army was killed and a soldier sustained injuries during the skirmish. The injured soldier was airlifted to the command hospital of the army’s Third Corps at Rangapahar, near Dimapur in Nagaland.
Sources at the 57 Mountain Division base at Masimpur, a few km from Silchar, said the militant group had set up camps along the Assam-Meghalaya border in Cachar district.
Formed last year, the outfit comprises youths of the Pnar tribe, which inhabits Meghalaya and parts of Cachar and North Cachar Hills districts. The group has about 60 members.
The army said the militant who was killed had tried to flee soon after his capture along with a comrade.
The security personnel had no option but to open fire on him, a spokesman said.
A countrymade gun and two pistols were seized from them.
The firefight between the army and the rebels pulverised residents of the nearby villages and Jatinga tea estate, which was cut off from civilisation by landslides for a fortnight last month. Workers of the garden reportedly fled their homes and took shelter in the factory during the shootout.
Nearly 500 starving workers of Jatinga Valley tea estate received rations for the first time in two weeks on Thursday.
The Cachar district administration and Jatinga Tea Ltd, which owns the garden, rushed food to the workers.