From Our Correspondent
Guwahati: Failure of Army personnel to stick to laid down norms in carrying out a counter-insurgency operation in Jorhat city of Assam where it raided residence of a businessman in the midnight of December 20 last has caused embarrassment to the force a Jorhat police registered a case of ‘robbery’ on the basis of an FIR filed by the businessman Surajit Gogoi alias Poona Gogoi.
The businessman was a former ULFA militant who came overground and surrendered way back in 1992 to start his own business.
A case registered in the Jorhat police station (Case No 922/2011) mentioned that that a gang of 10 to 12 persons armed with sophisticated weapons arrived in a Maruti Gypsy and a Tata Indica and barged into Surajit Gogoi’s house on December 20 midnight, and took away three mobile handsets, a licensed .32 pistol, a passport, Rs 1.5 lakh in cash and other valuables.
Gogoi also complained that the gang tied up his wife, two teen-aged sons and a daughter and locked them in one room and forcibly took away the items in his absence.
Jorhat police on investigation found out that one Sandeep Thapa, a havildar in the Army’s Intelligence Surveillance Unit under the 3 Corps headquartered at Rangapahar in Dimapur (Nagaland) had called up his parents in Himachal Pradesh at least twice from one of the three stolen mobile phones (No 9706060977), according to a police source.
After Jorhat police had started investigation, the Army in a statement issued by Media officer in Army’s 3 Corps admitted that it had carried out an “operation” in Jorhat and said the operation “did not go as per norms.”
The statement said that an “intelligence-based operation” was indeed carried out in Jorhat on December 20-21 “based on initial information forwarded by the police,” but the same did not go “as per norms.” “The intelligence was credible but the operation did not go as per norms.
The Army also has started an internal inquiry into the incident besides allowing Jorhat police to interrogate Havildar Sandeep Thapa.
The Army personnel named a few more colleagues involved in the operation at Surajit Gogoi’s residence, a police source informed.
The police investigation team has returned with some of the items that were taken away by Army personnel from the businessman’s house — a laptop, two mobile phones, a digital camera, seven CDs, a few Assamese Magazines, a passport, a driving license, and a business related files belonging to the businessman.
However, gold ornaments, Rs 1.5 lakh in cash and .32 licensed pistol taken away by “robbers’ as per the FIR lodged with police are yet to be recovered.
It is worth mentioning that the Army have no jurisdiction to conduct counter-insurgency operations in Jorhat, Golaghat and Guwahati metropolitan districts in Assam without informing the local police since the area is not under the purview of the Unified Command that comprise of Army, police and paramilitary forces.