Suspected Ulfa (Independent) cadres allegedly abducted three employees of energy major Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) from one of its rig sites in Upper Assam’s Sivasagar district in the early hours of Wednesday.

This is the second kidnapping case to hit the oil sector in the Northeast since December last year when the rebel outfit abducted two employees of a private oil drilling company — Quippo Oil and Gas Infrastructure Limited — from Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. They were released in early April.

Though Ulfa (I) is yet to claim responsibility for the abduction, Sivasagar superintendent of police Amitava Sinha told The Telegraph that the proscribed outfit was involved in the abduction and could have taken the kidnapped trio to bordering Nagaland.

The abducted employees — MM Gogoi (Sivasagar district), Ritil Saikia (Golaghat district) and Alokesh Saikia (Jorhat district) — are from Assam.

An ONGC statement early in the morning said two junior technicians (production) and a junior engineering assistant were abducted by “unknown armed miscreants” in the early hours of April 21.

The abduction took place from a rig site in Lakwa and the abducted employees were “taken” away by the miscreants in an operational vehicle belonging to the ONGC. Later, the vehicle was found abandoned near the Nimonagarh jungle “close” to the Assam-Nagaland border.

A complaint has been lodged with local police, the ONGC statement said, adding they were in constant touch with the police and higher authorities.

ONGC is the country’s biggest oil and gas exploration and production company, working in Assam since the 1960s.

Nimonagarh is around 15km from the rig site, very close to Nagaland’s Mon district. One of the two Quippo employees was released on April 5 in the jungles of Mon district, which shares border with Myanmar, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

“The operational vehicle is a medical emergency response vehicle always stationed at the site. Eight of our people were working in the night shift when armed miscreants came to the site. The rig site became operational in October 2020. We have received no contact or calls from either our employees or their abductors,” an ONGC official told this newspaper.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal expressed “deep concern” over the development and held an urgent meeting with chief secretary Jishnu Baruah and director-general of police Bhaskarjyoti Mahanta over the abduction by “unidentified” miscreants.

Additional director-general of police (law and order) G.P. Singh has already reached Lakwa on the chief minister’s direction and launched an investigation.