From Our Correspondent
TURA: A covert operation undertaken by Tura police commandos who crossed over to the South West Garo Hills district resulted in a major firefight at Salmanpara village in which one GNLA militant was shot dead while a second gave himself up on Saturday evening.
The slain GNLA cadre has been identified as Liluti Sangma.
The well planned operation began during the morning hours when a hardcore GNLA sympathizer, Sabithson Sangma of Salmanpara was nabbed by policemen in plain clothes when the former had come to Tura to purchase a mobile phone for a senior militant of the banned outfit.
After a sustained interrogation, SWAT commandos from Tura left for Salmanpara village, under Ampati district headquarters, to nab the three militants holed up inside the house of the sympathiser.
The SWAT commandos, however, were greeted with a hail of bullets following which the security personnel succeeded in killing one of them as another surrendered. The third militant escaped from the site.
Police recovered one AK 47 rifle, 40 rounds of ammunition, 5 detonators and GNLA documents from the site of the encounter.
Over Rs 4 lakh GNLA money seized in W’nagar
Meanwhile, Williamnagar police successfully thwarted a move by the GNLA to transfer extortion money after the arrest of two couriers and confiscation of Rs 4.5 lakh from hardware stores of the town on Saturday.
“We received information that GNLA overground workers are picking up the money from several hardware stores in Williamnagar. So we laid a trap with surveillance by police personnel on suspected shops,” Williamnagar police informed.
Surveillance teams spotted two young men entering a hardware store belonging to one Sattaranjan Shaw and Kishore Das where the money was handed over to the two visitors.
The police teams immediately pounced on the GNLA duo and apprehended them along with the shopkeeper Kishore Das.
The bag containing the extorted money was also recovered.
During interrogation the arrested GNLA workers, Elizer Marak and Tangsengbirth Ch Momin revealed that the money — Rs 4,75,000/ collected from all the hardware stores of
Williamnagar — was supposed to be handed over to their new area commander Jimmy Ch Momin.