SHILLONG, May 15 ? The Meghalaya Police in its operation against the banned militant organiations has decided to move against those controlling their financial affairs rather than those carrying out the actual operations, reports PTI. ?We have been successful with capturing people from the armed wings of the outfits like Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) earlier and seized huge arms and ammunition. But not much impact could be made as we did not identify their sources of funding,? the superintendent of police, East Khasi Hills district, I Nongrang, told reporters Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, a senior activist of the HNLC?s financial wing was arrested from the State capital and several documents and a computer were recovered from his possession. The HNLC, which operates mainly in the two Khasi Hills districts, collects nearly Rs 30 lakh per month from various business houses and individuals in and around Shillong on an average, Nongrang said.
The police has reports that the money was sent as hard cash via different routes either through the young recruits or sympathisers to their seniors camping in Bangladesh, he said. Although names of some individuals figured in the seized receipts for donating money to the outfit, no names of politicians and bureaucrats were found in such receipts, she said.
Asked to comment on how names of a few government departments also figured in the HNLC receipts, Nongrang said that she did not think the payment was made from the departments ?as a whole? but by some individuals working there. ?We will check up,? she said. The SP said that the basic means of communication between the HNLC cadres in Meghalaya and their higher-ups based in Bangladesh were both land-line and cellular phones. Although the weapons came from Bangladesh, some of these reached here from Myanmar as well, she said.
The SP said that the young recruits of the HNLC largely hailed from rural areas with not so well-off background while the senior members were drawn from affluent families. Nearly 40 per cent of the young recruits were from the Christian community, especially of Presbyterian and Catholic denominations.