Two of the three abducted ONGC employees were rescued in a joint operation involving the Indian Army, Assam Rifles, Nagaland Police and village guards from near the Indo-Myanmar border in Mon district of Nagaland on Friday night.
The trio — M.M. Gogoi (Sivasagar district), Ritil Saikia (Golaghat district) and Alokesh Saikia (Jorhat district) — were abducted by suspected Ulfa( I) cadres from the ONGC’s rig site at Lakwa in Sivasagar district on April 21 night by a group of five armed cadres belonging to the proscribed outfit.
Assam DGP B.J. Mahanta in a series of tweets broke the “good news” and how security forces rescued two of the victims (Mohini Mohan Gogoi and Alokesh Saikia) from near the international border and that efforts were on to rescue the third victim — Ritil Saikia.
The rescued employees have not been handed over to the Assam police or the ONGC till the time of filing this report.
Operations are still on, the army said.
Mahanta thanked the personnel of 57 Mountain Division, Leimakhong, Nagaland police, including its DGP, and the villagers of Mon district upto Maniakshu near the Indo-Myanmar Border for their role in the rescue operations.
“Without your kind cooperation and timely intervention of the security forces on our input and continuous coordination, the rescue operation would not have been possible,” Assam DGP tweeted, reiterating the role of the Ulfa(I) in the abduction executed by self-styled major Ganesh Lahon and his accomplices.
Though the details of the operations were not shared, sources in Mon said that the encounter took place some 15 km south of Mon town from where the international border is about 30 km.
Sources also said the timely alert by the three-tier unified command, which plans and execute counter-insurgency operations in the state, to the Assam Rifles, army and Nagaland police to intensify vigil along the border helped thwart the plans of the Ulfa.The day also saw the Sivasagar police, led by SP Amitava Sinha, arrest one more suspect in the kidnapping case.
Alokesh Saikia. Telegraph picture
So far 15 persons, suspected to be overground workers of the outfit from Sivasagar and adjoining Charaideo district, both bordering Mon district of Nagaland.
The police arrested one Biraj Chetia, 23, who had purchased a 2014 model bike from one Noor Ali on April 16 from neighbouring Dibrugarh district for Rs 18,000 on the “instruction” of one Ulfa cadre Biplab Jyoti Mohan through his Facebook page. Chetia then handed over the bike to two youths near Moran.
The bike, which was recovered from the place of occurrence on April 22, was used in the kidnapping incident, Sinha said.
The arrest of Chetia and 14 others is a “major” breakthrough in the case as it
will “help” unearth the abduction plan and the people involved.
The Ulfa(I) in a statement released to a section of the media on Saturday evening said they had handed over the three abducted ONGC employees to villagers of Tokoksinghu in Mon district after they were confronted by the security personnel.
The outfit said around 500 personnel of the army, Assam Rifles and Nagaland Police launched the operation at about 10pm and continued till 2.30am. They also blamed the ONGC for all the developments while threatening the energy major of dire consequences in the future.
