The security forces engaged in counter insurgency operations in Assam have arrested 26 cadres of different militant organisations in separate incidents on Monday and recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from their possession. Defence PRO lt. Col. Suneet Newton said this on Monday and added that while 18 of the arrested militants belong to NDFB’s anti-talk faction, eight others belong to the Karbi Peoples’ liberation Tigers (KPlT).
He said that the arrested includes NDFB faction’s IED expert Deven Goyari and other senior cadres of the outfit, who had been directly or indirectly involved in the December 23 massacre in three districts of the State that left 81 people killed. “While 11 NDFB cadres were nabbed from Chirang district, five cadres of the outfit were nabbed from Udalguri district followed by arrest of two cadres-one each from Baksa and Guwahati. The eight KPlT cadres were arrested from Karbi Anglong district,” he said.
He claimed that the arrest of Goyari was a body blow to the outfit and said that Goyari had made an unsuccessful attempt last month to plant an IED against Army. “Huge cache of arms and ammunition including one AK 56 rifle with magazine, one .9 mm pistol, 25 live rounds of 7.62 mm pistols, 54 rounds of live .9 mm ammunition, hand grenades, five pistols, two improvised explosive devices, nine detonators and etc,” he said adding that all the cadres had been arrested in separate operations jointly carried out by the Army, Assam police and national Investigating Agency (NIA).
“The NDFB cadre, who was arrested from Guwahati by the CRPF troops had entered the city to carry out subversive activities ahead of the forthcoming Republic Day celebrations,” he added. It may be mentioned here that the Army, Assam police and NIA team had on Saturday recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border in Sonitpur district. The recovered arms and ammunition included two AK 56 rifles, one HK 5.56 rifle, one pistol, two grenades along with large quantity of different types of ammunition.