In a blow to the anti-talk faction of National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants, the police and security forces operating in Assam on Friday arrested seven cadre of the outfit and recovered huge cache of arms and ammunition from their possession. One of the arrested cadre was directly involved in the December 23 massacre at Kokrajhar district, police said.
The recovered arms and ammunition include, one AK-47 rifle, one HK-33 rifle, one M-16 rifle, four .9 mm pistols, four hand grenades, 300 rounds of live ammunition, 12 pairs of Army uniform and eight bags of medicines, police added. “A joint team of Assam Police and the Rajput Regiment of the Army launched an operation in and around Kochugaon area of Kokrajhar district on Thursday night. The operation continued till morning and seven cadre of the outfit have been arrested on Thursday," said a spokesman of the Assam police.
“One of the arrested cadre, identified as Mithinga, was directly involved in the killings of civilians in Kokrajhar district on December 23," he said. “The arms and ammunition were later recovered from a different location on the lead provided by the militants,” police said. It may be mentioned here that the cadre of the NDFB faction opposed to talks had fired indiscriminately at five locations in Kokrajhar, Chirang and Sonitpur districts on December 23, killing 81 people including women and children.
The Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited the violence affected areas of the State later and ruled out any talks with the militant outfit. The Home Minister had also announced a probe into the violence by the National Investigating Agency (NIA). The security personnel including Army, Assam police and paramilitary forces had intensified operations against the NDFB faction after the gory massacre across the State, particularly along the Indo-Bhutan border in four districts of the Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts (BTAD) and along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border.
The NIA had already started the investigation and NIA Director General Sharad Kumar also visited the violence affected areas on Wednesday and Thursday. It may be mentioned here that the violence had also displaced over two lakhs people in four districts of Assam-Kokrajhar, Chirang, Sonitpur and Udalguri. While some of the people had returned to their houses after deployment of police and security force pickets, over one lakh people are still living in relief camps in the districts.