From Our Correspondent
Tura: A chilling and barbaric attack by suspected GNLA militants on the home of an off duty police constable in Rimrangpara village near Kherapara late Thursday night has left the policeman and his five-year-old daughter with bullet injuries.
A group of armed militants numbering between three to five cadres opened indiscriminate fire from the outside but the inmates of the house miraculously survived the attack which took place shortly after 11 in the night.
Rimrangpara village is 5 kms from Kherapara that is situated midway between Tura and the border town of Dalu.
Police constable Juelson N Marak along with his wife and daughter Kadimea Chimik Ch Momin were about to retire for the night when someone who apparently knew the family called him out by the name of Kadimea-Pa. The parents of a Garo family are traditionally known by the name of their first child.
He looked out of the window and saw a man in civilian clothes with his face covered standing next to two camouflage dressed militants brandishing an AK-47 and a SLR rifle. The militants demanded that he come out of the house.
Fearing for his family’s safety the policeman tried to hurriedly push his wife and daughter towards a concrete wall when all hell broke loose.
The militants opened up with their weapons spraying the house with round after round of automatic fire. Bullets went through the windows and the door with one hitting the police constable on his right thigh.
Seeing her father fall, baby Kadimea rushed out from the safety of the corner towards her dad only to be hit by one of the bullets that pierced her right leg.
The casualty inside the house would have been more grievous but for the concrete RCC structure of the home.
When the firing had died down, the militants fled from the area not daring to enter the house for fear their victim could be alive and armed with his service weapon.
The father-daughter duo were rushed to Tura Civil Hospital for urgent medical aid the same night.
Doctors have informed that both victims are out of danger. The father will be undergoing surgery on Saturday morning to remove a bullet lodged inside his thigh bone while the minor was fortunate that the bullet had exited the leg.
The scale of the cold-blooded attack can be gauged from the fact that police search teams have recovered as many as 45 empty cases of AK-47 and SLR rifle that were fired onto the house by the militants.
The police constable who happens to be posted with the Shillong district executive force was on leave to be with his family when he was attacked.